


the movement of glaciers

by RoseMeister



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Vereesa has a Huge crush, jaina teaches vereesa magic, marking this one as discontinued sry, semi-background void invasion, the slow & awkward transition period between friendship and romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseMeister/pseuds/RoseMeister
Summary: Jaina’s touch makes the world feel normal again. Like it did so many years ago, when she was just a ranger in training, hiding the fleeting crushes of youth from her sisters.“I’m so glad you’re here.” Jaina whispers, pulling back to sweep her eyes over the ranks of soldiers behind her. The sight seems to remind her of reality, and she steps back, straightens.“Welcome to Boralus!” She says to them, her voice firm and controlled. But her eyes drift back to Vereesa, as inevitably as an anchor sinking through deep ocean, and the corners of her eyes crinkle in a smile she doesn’t let anyone else see.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this art](http://jawlipops.tumblr.com/post/181336109215/theyre-underrated) by jawli

Wars come and wars go, but the inevitability of conflict never really changes. Vereesa’s sons start growing tall, and the nature of the world can no longer be hidden from them. Giramar still brags about every new spell he learns, but no longer are they simple ones, conjured lights and showers of sparks, but great spheres of flame, and ice shards sharp enough to kill. Galadin still follows her like a lost duckling, like she used to follow her sisters, only these days he copies the way she holds her bow, carves deep into his bones the same knowledge of how to draw an arrow back to your cheek, of how much force is needed to send an arrow tearing through your enemy’s throat. Her sons are almost men, she realises one day, watching the two of them practice. Nearly old enough to join her on the battlefield, but not nearly old enough to understand how awful that simple fact is.

In Vereesa’s eyes, they are still so, so young, and her heart breaks every time she has to leave them behind to join some new campaign.

New orders take her west, have the Silver Covenant serving as extra manpower for the Kul Tirans. The way the orders came, a fancy letter handed over by a minor officer who barely knew her name, had her bristling, half-tempted to force a mage to send her to Stormwind to give High King Anduin a piece of her mind.

But Vereesa’s people had been languishing in Dalaran too long, itching for something more exciting than listening to reports of every battle they are kept separate from. And the new war that’s coming, the one twisted out of shadows and ash and the inexplicable Void has them jittery, more than eager to find some way to fight back.

And none of them have ever visited Kul Tiras, either. So, she lets her anger go, finds layer upon layer of excuses to hide behind that all wash away like sand as soon as they arrive in Boralus, and Jaina greets her with a tight hug that isn’t at all proper or formal.

And she returns the hug just as fierce. Some part of Vereesa’s mind whispers on and on, tries to remind her that she is still a commander, that they’re still glued to yet another war, that she didn’t even get to choose to come here. But for that handful of seconds, she ignores it. Wars will come when they will, and orders will have her moving about as aimlessly as driftwood, but in the end Vereesa is only a mortal woman.

Jaina’s touch makes the world feel normal again. Like it did so many years ago, when she was just a ranger in training, hiding the fleeting crushes of youth from her sisters.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Jaina whispers, pulling back to sweep her eyes over the ranks of soldiers behind her. The sight seems to remind her of reality, and she steps back, straightens.

“Welcome to Boralus!” She says to them, her voice firm and controlled. But her eyes drift back to Vereesa, as inevitably as an anchor sinking through deep ocean, and the corners of her eyes crinkle in a smile she doesn’t let anyone else see.

* * *

Jaina finds her at the archery range, pulls her aside before she can walk onto the grounds proper. The day is warm, or as warm as days go in Kul Tiras, but the light is strong, and the sea breeze passes over it all, and Vereesa had been looking forward to burning away a handful of hours at the range. It’s one of the first things they set up when the Silver Covenant arrived, before they had even moved into the small set of side rooms in Proudmoore Keep that the Admiralty had so graciously allowed them to use as headquarters.

It’s not just an area for training, even if the tides of war will carry them away soon enough. More so it’s a place to forget about every other awful truth in the world for a while, to forget fear and loss and whatever other heavy emotions squat upon the mind, and focus on being little more than a hand pulling back string, to squash the world down into a single straw target. Most of her mages shoot too, for those very reasons, even if their aim is laughable.

Still, she follows Jaina to the side, one hand still fiddling with the fletching of an arrow.

“What news?” She asks, keeping her voice low. “Has there been an attack? Ships sighted? How much time do we have?”

“Oh.” Jaina says, surprised. “I didn’t- I’m not here as the Lord Admiral, only as. Well. Me. There is no present danger.”

“Oh.” Vereesa feels more than a little awkward at that, but she forces the feeling aside. “What do you need then?”

“I had someone make… well no, actually, I made it. But I promise it works, or at least it should. I tested it a few times. But still.”

“Do you want to try that again?” Amusement sinks into her tone, and the slight blush on Jaina’s face cuts deep enough into her that she almost wishes she were on the range, washing her mind clean of the endless twisting distraction. Even if it’s pleasant to dwell on. Maybe especially because such things are pleasant.

Jaina breathes in slow and visibly regains control of herself. “When I heard you were coming,” she says, “I started making something that I thought would be useful. Maybe not quite a present per say, but something helpful. I’m rambling again. Here.” She reaches behind her to pull out a plain wooden box, unclasped and unlocked, and she hands it to Vereesa, motions for her to open it.

Inside is a set of leather bracers, made of finely crafted leather with small runes inset all along their length, but tooled in so delicately that she’d almost believe the design was simply ornamental. But the leather hums slightly when she brushes the runes with her hand, the magical potential in it more than easy to sense.

She’s never been trained in magic, not formally. But Quel’dorei blood is sensitive to the arcane, and she has spent so many years in Dalaran that being around magic feels more natural than not. So maybe a mage could read arcane runes, transcribe their meaning, but Vereesa only knows what she feels.

It makes her think of the ocean, of great crashing waves freezing right at their peak. Of fields of ice and howling winds, of a bitter cold than sinks ice into your bones. She touches the brightest rune of the set, and for a second it feels as if she has grabbed a hold of an icicle and refused to let go, waiting to see if her blood burns hotter than the spreading, devouring cold, risked losing fingers for a game of pride.

And then she lets go, draws her hand back to meet Jaina’s eyes again. Jaina’s was still watching her, almost unfocused, but she snaps back to attention when she notices Vereesa move.

“What are these?” Vereesa says, a tone of awe in her voice.

There’s an almost wicked glimmer to Jaina’s eyes. “Fire a handful of arrows, and you’ll see.”

“Is that really easier, or simply more dramatic?”

Jaina just smiles, sudden and fleeting but bright.

“You’ll see.” She says.

* * *

 “Am I allowed to walk onto the range?” Jaina murmurs, leaning in close enough that none of the rangers nearby can hear her. Too close, Vereesa realises, as her breath brushes against her neck.

“Just don’t step in front of anyone holding a bow.” Vereesa tells her, catching her by the arm before she does just that, and telling herself it doesn’t mean anything when she lets the hand remain, guides them to a spot a good hundred metres from her chosen target. Jaina leans forward, squints at the target, only stops when Vereesa taps her arm.

“Are you already doing calculations?” She asks, and Jaina only confirms her suspicion when she draws back, crosses her arms.

Vereesa tilts her head slightly, and Jaina shrugs. “Maybe a little.”

“A little is still some.”

“I just want to make sure it all works properly. But fine, I will only watch.”

The flicker of a smile returns, and Vereesa looks back towards her equipment before she can lose herself staring.

Her arrows are sharp, her bowstring freshly waxed, and there is little more to do than check the straps of the new bracers, run her fingers over those same runes again. The magic is just as strong as before, so too the sensation of frost, and she can hardly stop herself from reaching for the sensation over and over again. It’s a terrible brand of curiosity, like unconsciously reaching out to bury your hands in snow. No matter how familiar the sensation is, no matter how cold your conscious mind knows it will be, how unpleasant the thoughts of frostbitten fingers, it is still impossible to crush the instinct down.

“How exactly do I use these?” She asks, and Jaina’s arms uncross, immediately eager.

“It’s like a spell.” Jaina says. One of her hands starts unconsciously tracing runes in the air as she speaks, so subtly charming that Vereesa has to force herself to listen to her words. “Or 95% of a spell really. All it needs is that extra push to activate, like when a spell is…” She drifts off for a moment, lost in thought, but comes back with even more intensity, leaning in to tap Vereesa’s bow. “It’s like when an archer has an arrow pulled back and ready to fly. All it needs is to be released.”

Vereesa nods, and Jaina steps back to give her more room. And Vereesa slips into a carefully honed sense of concentration, lets the rest of the world melt away as she adjusts her stance, nocks an arrow to the string. She reaches out with her awareness, tries to connect with whatever magic is caged within the bracers, and draw it into her, breathe it in like air. She feels something as she does. No grand image like before, but something, and the air she breathes tastes like that from the peak of a high mountain, cold and sharp.

She draws an arrow back in one fluid motion and fires it, breathing out as she does. And something travels with it, wreathes it in a subtle shimmering blue that she can only just register before the arrow hits, and the entire target erupts in a burst of ice.

From beside her, she can hear Jaina’s sharp intake of breath, notices every one of her soldiers pause their conversation and stop shooting, but she ignores it all, draws back another arrow. This one she fires with confidence, as cold and sharp as the magic she can feel curling within her chest. Her arrow almost seems to shift in mid-air, to grow as large as a ballista bolt, and it collides with the frozen target with a crack that sounds like thunder. Or like a great mountain of ice breaking in two in the middle of the ocean, too isolated for any to hear.

The ice explodes into thousands of sharp shards, and where each lands it grows, spreading until every single target on the range is frozen solid, and several elves jump back from the growing frost, fearful of what the ice might do to living skin.

Even the seabirds have gone quiet, and the distant murmur of the rest of Boralus seems een more distant than before. And every single soul on the range stares at Vereesa, not even the wild destruction of ice enough to distract them from the woman who summoned a frozen storm from her bow.

“Wow.” Vereesa says, her voice quiet. But even still, she knows everyone there can hear. But she doesn’t quite care enough to pause, and she turns to gather Jaina into a crushing hug, laughing against her shoulder. And maybe her people will stare, and whisper. But they likely whisper already, and Vereesa is far too caught up in the thrill of it all to let it stop her.

Jaina’s arms wrap around her too, warm and encircling, and the touch of her makes what’s left of the cold twist of ice in her chest melt, and settle in her stomach.

“You like it?” Jaina asks from too close to her ear. It’s enough to make her shiver, and Vereesa makes herself pull away before Jaina can notice.

“Yes, I… You made this?”

“Yes.” Jaina might be trying to hide it, but there’s a noticeable hint of pride in her voice, even with just a single word. Jaina reaches out, touches one bracer with a single finger, and each rune lights up with their maker’s touch with the blinding white of pure snow.

Magic comes to Jaina as easily as breathing, as ingrained as archery to any Windrunner, and it rolls off her in waves without thought. Even something as impressive as these bracers holds barely a candle to what Jaina could do with her magic if she set her mind to it.

It’s incredible, really, to imagine. And in truth she is proud to be able to call Jaina a friend, not just as an impressive ally but also as the woman beneath all that, with her brilliant mind and passionate heart. The tides of war have come time and time again to drown her, and every time Jaina has clawed her way back to the surface.

But Vereesa is only a broken woman with a bow. She can never truly hope to compare, or come even close to climbing her way up to the same level.

“Thank you, Jaina.” She says, ignoring her own thoughts. “You are truly kind. I can only hope to use your gift to help aid Kul Tiras in these trying times.”

Jaina’s expression seems to falter for a moment, with a brief flash of something deep and painful, but the expression fades all too soon, and Jaina just touches a hand to her shoulder, plasters on a smile.

“I’m glad.” Jaina says. “But I won’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you wish to train without me distracting you.”

She twists away before Vereesa can even attempt a protest, slips through a portal to who even knows where. And Vereesa misses her, immediately, bites down on the wave of loneliness that floods her as soon as she’s out of sight.

But there are a million distractions to save her from such pain, and she motions for her soldiers to start cleaning up the remnants of their training range, and tells herself to ignore the way her own people stare at her, their gazes lingering for the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

They give the Silver Covenant rooms in the least used wing of the Keep. The rooms are either bare or strictly utilitarian, and more than a handful are so full of dust that Vereesa has to wonder if they’ve actually been touched since they were first constructed. But the space allowed is generous, and they have it cleaned and set up as a military base within a handful of hours.

Jaina drops by just as the sun sets, when all Vereesa’s soldiers have left the range and started the graceless task of arguing over which room to take. She pulls Vereesa aside, keeps her voice low.

“I just wanted to check how you were settling in.” She says. “I am sorry for the mess, by the way. No one’s used these rooms since-” Jaina cuts herself off. “We haven’t had so many people in the Keep for a long time.”

“I should hope we are not too much of an inconvenience.”

“Oh, no. It’s been good, actually. It makes the Keep feel less like a giant stone cage.”

Two rangers pass them in the hallway, look curiously at the two of them in the second it takes to recognise who they are, and then they gracefully look away, and walk on faster. Vereesa can already hear the whispered gossip that will surely have spread through the ranks by morning.

“Actually,” Jaina starts, leaning in closer, “can we talk? And not about matters of war, for once. I only- I feel as if it has been a decade since we last talked about anything but politics.”

“We could talk in my quarters? Fair warning however, if the boys see you there, they’ll never let you leave.”

Jaina laughs softly. Only for a second. Only for just long enough to count as a laugh before she folds it back away and buries it within her chest.

“I think I can take that risk.” She says.

The boys have long since gone to bed, but Jaina stays still. She has her paperwork spread out across Vereesa’s table, but even with the endless signatures, the notes she scribbles on the sides of pages, and the not so small cluster of calculations she works out on a notepad, she still manages to hold a conversation. Vereesa glances over at her notepad once, while Jaina’s telling a story about some foolish thing Tandred has done lately, sees enough equations and numbers to make her eyes hurt. But it doesn’t slow Jaina down, not even when the night drags further on.

By all rights, Vereesa should be the responsible one here. She should insist that Jaina put all her work away, go back to her rooms and just sleep for once. But she is selfish, and the company is too pleasant. She lets Jaina stay, and the sound of her voice drives out some of the loneliness from her heart.

“Here.” Vereesa says, dropping a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table. “I brought a few bottles with me.”

Jaina raises an eyebrow at her, but Vereesa doesn’t even ask, just uncorks the bottle and pushes a full glass towards her, draining half her own glass before Jaina has so much as touched hers.

“I’m almost surprised your sharing.” Jaina says, but accepts the glass regardless, takes a single sip while Vereesa refills her own. “I’ve been told you can be quite protective of your wine.”

“I’ll have you know that I am an excellent host.” Vereesa tells her, watching as Jaina hides a smile behind her glass. “I am!” she repeats, almost indignant, as Jaina’s smile only grows.

“Of course.” Jaina tells her, her eyes flickering towards Vereesa only for a moment, before she looks back to the endless piles of her work. She is sketching lines on a map now, tiny runes set out around what looks like a city. It’s not a map she recognises by sight, but she saw that very same harbour with her own eyes just this morning.

Vereesa taps a finger on the map, on the edge where it won’t disturb her markings. “What exactly are you working on here?”

Jaina lights up in an instant. The map is spun around to face Vereesa, and she points out several of the runes. The shapes are familiar, Vereesa has spent enough time around mages and magics to recognise such things on sight, but their meanings are lost on her.

“I’ve been working on this in my spare time.” Jaina says. Even her voice is louder, more animated. “It’s an improvement to Boralus’ magical defences…” Jaina slips into a mess of complicated words Vereesa only half understands, a type of magic so complex she is sure most mages in Dalaran would struggle to grasp, and Vereesa is so utterly lost in it. But Jaina’s passion is infectious, and utterly charming, and Vereesa sits there quietly listening to the sound of her voice.

Life is full of risks. Vereesa knows that far too well. She has taken so many, and lost so much in return. Most days she takes that as a sign to try and be brave, an encouragement to kick her out of wallowing in the losses of the past. Even trying to avoid risks only opens you up to danger further down the line.

But some things, she is not brave enough to do.

“I’m sorry.” Jaina says. Her voice loses its excitement in an instant, drops down into something Vereesa almost has to strain to hear. “This isn’t at all interesting to you.”

Vereesa touches her hand. Only lightly, but it makes Jaina look back up at her. She can’t quite force a smile, so she slips her hand into Jaina’s and holds it tight.

“I like hearing about the things you care about.” She says. “Please don’t stop.”

Jaina’s smile is still brief, but she starts talking again, and she speaks slower this time, tries to explain every single topic she brings up. In truth, it feels like trying to sail for the first time, being left adrift in an ocean with only the vague hope that you will be able to decipher the mess of ropes. But Jaina always seems genuinely thrilled to talk about her spells, and she needs more space in her life to feel happy, now more than ever.

Jaina’s voice fills the late-night air, lingers on deep into the night. Her paperwork covers Vereesa’s table, and they share one bottle of wine, and then another. And all it does is make Vereesa _want_. She wants this to linger on, she wants to ask Jaina to stay the night, and then to stay on tomorrow night, to blur the lines until these are no longer Vereesa’s rooms or Jaina’s home but _theirs_. She wants Jaina to look at her with as much passion as she looks at her arcane theories. She wants Jaina to love her like she loves Kul Tiras. More than anything, she wants Jaina to be as distracted as she is, to break off their conversation to touch her, to pull her in close enough to steal a kiss.

But Jaina doesn’t notice, and Vereesa doesn’t ask, and eventually Jaina just returns home to her own wing of the Keep, none the wiser.

* * *

 There’s a sighting of Naga off the Northern shore of Stormsong Valley, and Jaina insists on being the one to investigate, makes all manner of claims about the speed of her vessel, the lack of need for a crew, but her insistence is so strong that Vereesa doubts anyone believes her motivations are anything but a desire to cure her restlessness.

But they agree to let her go. And somehow, despite Vereesa’s repeated reminders of exactly how badly the sea disagrees with her delicate constitution, Jaina manages to convince Vereesa to accompany.

There’s only a handful of things to be packed on board, but between that and waiting for their turn to exit the harbour, they have time to spare, and for once Jaina doesn’t run to find some more paperwork to do.

She stands by the railing of her ship instead, leaning on it to watch the entrance to the harbour, the ships passing in and out of the massive sea-gate, the sailors climbing up and down ropes and scurrying about on deck.

Here, with the salt spray filling the air, and the endless echoing calls of the seabirds, Jaina looks more alive than she's ever seen her. Jaina looks genuinely happy, she realises, in a way Vereesa has only seen before in fleeting moments.

But Jaina doesn't look at her. Her gaze is drawn out instead to the ocean, the distant ships slowly crawling towards the harbour. Vereesa is an afterthought here, unneeded and unnecessary.

She settles beside Jaina, squints out at the waves with her, and pretends she knows anything about the incoming ships. Most of all, she just ignores the familiar dull ache that sinks in her chest like a leaden weight.

Once they escape the harbour, their passage is swift.  Perhaps it’s an unnecessary show of power, but as soon as they have slipped out of the harbour, granted themselves room to manoeuvre, Jaina weaves another spell, one complex and powerful enough that Vereesa can just about taste it in the air, like a drop of salt on her tongue, the sensation only growing stronger as the ship itself hums, and rises up from the waves.

Vereesa catches her balance on the railing, and leans over it to see the ocean far below, once large waves shrinking rapidly until they are little more than tiny creases on paper, and their ship hangs over it all like some watchful moon, adrift in a new ocean made of little more than air.

Boralus is in the distance, and they are high enough to see the entire city. From here she cannot see any people, but the tiny harbour with its well carved ships, the endless canals and the looming Keep in the distance make her wish she had some way of capturing the sight, immortalising it better than just as a thin memory.

Vereesa turns to Jaina now, wide-eyed, seconds off babbling incoherently about a sight Jaina has doubtlessly seen hundreds of times, but her words run dry and slip out of reach when she finds Jaina watching her, gaze soft.

“I told you that you didn’t need to worry about getting sea-sick.” Jaina says. The softness fades away as soon as it is seen, like a fluttering candle blown out by the wind.

* * *

 They don’t find anything on their patrol. Jaina casts several spells, trying to track the slightest hint of any void presence, but each one finds nothing. Somehow the lack of evidence doesn’t settle her, and Jaina tries one magical test after another. Each one runs empty.

No matter how large the ship, being trapped on all sides by the sea unsettles Vereesa, and she insists on them stopping by several uncharted islands, burns away an hour or two on each one hunting for tracks, or even just the slightest sign. Mainly she just finds loud seabirds, and eventually even she has to concede to defeat.

Not quite willing to run back home yet, Jaina stops her ship in the middle of the ocean, sets it back down into the sea and insists that they at least get some training done while they’re out.

“Are you expecting me to shoot holes in your vessel?” Vereesa asks at that, but Jaina only waves her hand, summons a dozen pillars of ice from the sea, and settles back to watch.

Vereesa has always been good at ignoring a million possible distractions while her bow is in her hands, but she doesn’t quite retain her confidence in that ability now. The ship shifts under her feet, in a rhythm she hasn’t quite managed to trace yet, leaving her to continually grab the railing, or change her stance, the ever-pressing fear of sea-sickness pressing on the back of her mind. And Jaina hasn’t found herself any spells to practice, only insisted on standing nearby, watching and analysing. And maybe human eyesight isn’t quite so clear as elven, but it would hardly take much to notice any of Vereesa’s more obvious tells.

But she forces herself to breathe instead, to remember what her sisters had taught her when she was young. About how to let the rest of her worries slip away, to melt away your sense of self until you can move like water, to dodge enemy blows and still retain calm focus.

She breathes in, and out, and adjusting to the shifting boards beneath her feet is like moving on a battlefield, something familiar and easy to forget as she raises her bow, draws it back, and summons that same cold twist of ice as before.

It hits the first target with enough force that the arrow shatters and the ice cracks beneath the blow, but she barely hears it, only aims at the next. This arrow hits like a siege weapon against castle ramparts, and the pillar of ice splits, half of it crashing down into the ocean. And she fires again, and again, until the final pillar explodes into shards of ice, several pieces flying with such force that they embed themselves into the solid wood of Jaina’s ship.

Vereesa is turning to apologise, but before she can Jaina is throwing her arms around her, barking out a short and ungraceful laugh. It lingers almost too long, without any of the usual interruptions or distractions to remind them of responsibility.

Eventually, Jaina slides out of the embrace, and reaches for one of Vereesa’s arms. She stops an inch from touching one of Vereesa’s bracers, glancing back up at Vereesa.

“May I?” She asks, and Vereesa just nods, confused but not unwilling.

Jaina holds Vereesa’s arm steady with one hand, the other tracing down the finely stamped runes, watching the way each one glows white as she touches it, the light almost blinding. It makes the bracer hum, slow but melodic, a subtle kind of song. Vereesa wonders quietly if it’s a kind of language that Jaina can understand, if her touch is curious or strictly academic. Her own question is answered only moments later, as Jaina takes Vereesa’s other hand, guides it to brush over the same runes.

They glow under her touch. Only weakly, but the glow is there, the colour a pale blue rather than pure white. The runes still feel cold against her fingers, but the cold is familiar now. Like diving into a cold river, waiting for your body to acclimatise to the temperature, the biting cold only making you feel more alive.

“You’ve learnt how to use these very quickly.” Jaina says. Her eyes search over Vereesa, as intense as when she focuses on any of her maps, her dusty arcane texts. Cutting, evaluating. Looking a touch too deep to be comfortable. “I was honestly expecting it to take much longer.”

“It almost feels natural to use them.”

Jaina’s gaze is still too intense, and Vereesa looks away, looks off towards the empty horizon, the wide expanse of ocean and sky that surround. It’s private at least, with no Kul Tiran sailors or elven rangers to stare and whisper endlessly. Somehow the privacy is almost worse. There are no other distractions, no one to interrupt with reports, summon either of them away to meetings. Nothing but Jaina and her too wise eyes.

And Jaina squeezes her hand, drags her attention away from the sea. Her gaze is softer now, but no less focused, and she drags a thumb over the back of Vereesa’s hand, slow but controlled.

“Have you ever actually tried to do magic?”

“No?”

“Never?” Jaina presses.

“No. As soon as I was old enough, I was learning how to shoot, or gallivanting in the forest with my sisters. But it’s not like it- I doubt I could so much as summon the smallest of flames, even if I tried for days.”

Jaina waits for a moment. “I’m not sure I’d agree.”

“Jaina…” Vereesa sighs out.

“Listen. Within minutes of putting those bracers on for the first time you froze half the archery range. That’s- I don’t think you realise how impressive that is.”

“That was just the bracers. Not me.”

“It was you.” Jaina tugs at her hand, frustration starting to creep into her expression. “I’m not trying to say that you’re secretly an archmage. But maybe there’s something there. Don’t you want to find it? Even if you can only ever learn a handful of party tricks.”

“Jaina, there’s- Who would even teach me this? We’re in the middle of a war.”

“I could teach you.”

“Jaina.”

“I’m serious! I’ve taught magic before.” Something like a shadow briefly passes across her face, but Jaina presses on. “I’d get to boss you around, make you write essays on magical theory. It’d be fun!”

“This is sounding much more enjoyable for you than me.”

Jaina giggles suddenly, the sound high and girlish. She slaps a hand over her mouth, crushing the sound, but it still sneaks through. It’s so far detached from the rest of their situation, the endless war plans and movement of troops, the training and the endless fear of the unknown, that for a second Vereesa forgets about the rest. Forgets that they’re on a patrol, that anything could lie in wait under the waves.

Something like a smile cracks its way onto her face. “It would make you happy if I said yes?” She asks.

“It would.”

“Then fine.”

* * *

It’s days later by the time they manage to carve out time to start. Jaina just about drags Vereesa out of a meeting about ship movements and vague sightings of Naga, and Vereesa feels like they are less distinguished leaders than wild children, running before anyone more responsible can pin them down with work. Vereesa catches a glimpse of Katherine Proudmoore watching them as they slip out. Only Vereesa is looking her way, but Katherine nods at her, before turning and capturing one of her advisors in yet another discussion.

She doesn’t get a chance to ask why before Jaina is dragging her upstairs, sweeping open a door to a wide room filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves.

“With so many books, this has to be your bedroom.” Vereesa says, and Jaina shoves her lightly.

“I am not that bad.” She insists, only to shrug a moment later. “Not yet at least.”

“Give it a few years.”

“But no. This is… Well, technically it’s the Keep’s library. But I started adding more and more books back when I was still a child. Originally it was just a handful of shipping manifests, old sailing logs, things like that.”

“Did you read those too then?”

A bright flash of a smile, then Jaina leaves her side to stroke the spines of a handful of books. “I may have.” She pulls a book out, a heavy thing with decorated with gold leaf, twisting gold patterns that Jaina drums her fingers on for a few moments before slotting the book back into place. “This was the first place I went to after I became Lord Admiral. I expected to see it gutted bare, my childhood books long since ash. But it was all still here. Dusty and untouched, but here.”

“You thought they’d burn your books?”

“I didn’t exactly have a good reputation here, you know.” She coughs pointedly. “Still. I’m sure there’s something in here we can use.”

And Jaina is off, only a step off dancing among the shelves, brushing her hands along spines as she moves, occasionally stopping to pull a book out. Sometimes she reconsiders, pushes the book back in its place, but many she keeps, until there is a small mountain of old books covering the single small desk in the room. After hours and hours of war plans and ceaseless circular discussions, the mere sight of this room seems to have animated her, and there’s the faintest twitch of a smile at the corner of her lips.

It makes Vereesa jealous, for a second, but she crushes that awful swell of emotion, moves to look out the wide window, resting her elbows on the stone windowsill. Outside is Boralus, intense and human and alive, full of tiny scurrying figures with a thousand personal worries. From here, she can see the harbour, the wide array of Kul Tiran ships. Their pride as a nation, tangled up in distant furled sails.

A hand touches her arm, drags her focus back away from the window.

“I found you a few books to start with.” Jaina says, eyes bright.

“Just a few.”

“More than a few. I couldn’t find you any picture books unfortunately.”

“Jaina.” Vereesa starts, and Jaina flashes her an innocent smile that she doesn’t at all believe. “If you had handed me a picture book, I would have just left.”

“You have no sense of fun.”

The pile of books is intimidating, but Vereesa lets Jaina guide her to them, set her down with a small pile of note-paper and a charcoal.

“This was my favourite when I was eight.” Jaina says, handing her a heavy book wrapped in worn leather.

“Did you really spend your entire childhood reading books like this?”

“Yes. When I wasn’t trying to convince father to teach me how to sail.”

“Just curled up in whatever corner you could find, reading dense arcane theory?”

“Yes.”

“That’s adorable.”

“Shut it.” Jaina says, clearly flustered. She slaps Vereesa’s shoulder lightly, barely more than a brush of her hand. Vereesa almost laughs.

“No one else comes here,” Jaina says, “So you can stay as long as you’d like. I’ll just be around the corner, doing some of my own research.”

“Thank you, Jaina.”

Jaina’s smile lingers a second longer this time.

* * *

 She starts with the book Jaina had claimed as a favourite. It starts slow, and remains so throughout every page she flicks across, a hundred looping sentences that seem to wriggle out of understanding as soon as they leave her mind, until she is reading and re-reading each paragraph a hundred times. Within five minutes of opening it she is already skipping pages, trying to make sense of the handful of diagrams rather than brave the ceaseless torrent of words.

They look interesting, at least. But they are little more than unexplained shapes, twisting lines that she cannot intuitively understand.

She gives up on this book, chooses another. And then one more, each more convoluted than the last. It sparks a pulsing headache, one only made worse by the compounding frustration that none of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Is it the books, or simply her? Jaina might have been a prodigy, but she had torn through these very same books when she was just a child. Vereesa’s own sons never seemed to have this much trouble learning their spells. And they were tempestuous when they were young, throwing anything they found too difficult by the wayside.

Maybe Jaina was wrong, and there is not even the tiniest spark of magical potential in her, and these books are only willing to reveal their secrets to those with magical talent.

But still, she doesn’t quite relish the idea of giving up so soon. Especially not after how genuinely excited Jaina seemed by the simple thought of it.

In the end, she crumples up what thin attempts she made at notes, picks the first book up, and goes searching through the twisting maze of shelves for Jaina.

She finds her in the very corner of the library, surrounded by even more books than she had found for Vereesa. What’s more amusing is the woven pile of blankets she sits in, like a giant bird’s nest. She doesn’t even notice Vereesa approach, her sight blocked by a dozen open books she has floating in mid-air.

Vereesa raps her knuckles on the bookshelf nearest to her, and every book falls in an instant, before Jaina manages to recover and give her a tiny wave.

There’s a handful of things she could say. Even if they all just amount to the same thing, an admission of failure and a desperate plea for help.

And yet.

“Did you really make a study nest?” She says instead, deflecting.

Jaina looks embarrassed as she moves to gather up her fallen research, sweeping it towards her in a wild mess of a pile.

“It’s comfortable.” Jaina says.

“You’re adorable.”

And Jaina flushes bright red. It makes Vereesa feel as if she has taken a step too far, and she immediately backtracks.

“I know you’re busy,” Vereesa starts, “but I thought…” Maybe it’s her pride speaking, but she switches gears mid-sentence. “Can I join you?” She asks. “Only if it’s no trouble.”

She’s already regretting the intrusion, taken a step back before Jaina flashes another smile, shoves a half-dozen books out of the way and pats the space next to her.

“You barely have to ask.” Jaina says, and finally, Vereesa moves, takes up the spot next to her. There really isn’t much room. Sandwiched between a shelf and the bare stone wall, there’s only a comfortable amount of space for a single person standing, and to remain forces them to sit shoulder to shoulder. Vereesa feels stiff and awkward for that first minute, but Jaina doesn’t ask her to move, or awkwardly tense herself away. She only picks up her books again, starts the very same process she was sunk in before Vereesa interrupted.

Jaina holds each book suspended in the air, spinning between them regularly, bringing one in closer to her face to read briefly before she switches to another one. There’s a small pile of notes in Jaina’s lap, and every handful of seconds she leans down to jot something else down. There’s a rhythm to her movements, like she’s working to the beat of a song no one else can hear, a music so enrapturing that she often has to pause her note-taking to drum her fingers along the pages in a steady rhythm.

This Jaina is different to the hundreds of others known. The Lord Admiral is one woman, the Jaina she used to be as a young girl is another. Even the Jaina Vereesa thought she knew is different to the quiet one here, the woman alone to herself, lost in aged words and her own theories.

They don’t even exchange any words, but it still feels so intimate, to catch a glimpse of the woman Jaina is when no one else is watching. That familiar sense of want snakes its way back through her, until she can imagine what a future might be like if she could have this sort of thing more often. That’s what she desires more than anything. Not so much the grand romantic gestures, but the small things. Sharing spaces and secrets. Pining down that elusive chance at happiness, catching it, and this time, never letting it escape. A second chance, an escape from the quagmire of the past.

But she’s still too terrified. Because it had to be Jaina, didn’t it?

It couldn’t have been one of any hundred of half-strangers, people she could risk losing. Even if it had been one of her own soldiers she might have been able to take the chance. Some nights, she almost wishes time had never passed, that she was still mired in hate and loss, that her heart had never healed enough to want again. Because Jaina she can’t lose. Not after everything they’ve been through. Not when it feels as if there is only one person who really understands.

“Are you alright?” Jaina whispers. Her hand is touching Vereesa’s face, wiping it clean. And she is close. Far, far too close. Too close to hide secrets from. And Vereesa has never been a particularly talented liar.

“I’m worried about the future.” Is all she says, the only thing that cuts close enough to the truth to not be a lie.

“We’re going to get through it.” Jaina tells her. The assurance in her voice is calming, believable. But it has always been hard to doubt her. “Together.”

Vereesa lets her eyes close, until all she really knows is Jaina’s touch, her hand on her face, and where Jaina reaches with her other hand to rub her back, slow and rhythmic but still almost too much.

“You know,” Jaina starts, voice low. There’s no one to hear, but Vereesa appreciates it still. “I’m still really glad you’re here.” Vereesa can hear Jaina draw in a breath, unsteady and slow. But she keeps her eyes closed, just focuses on the sound of Jaina’s voice. “It’s been years actually, since I came back here. But I still know that no one quite trusts me yet. I feel as if I’m always trying to prove myself to my people, my family, to anyone who so much as glances my way. To show that I’m not the traitor they thought I was. Or the madwoman I almost became after Theramore. Sometimes I just want the space to feel like just a person again.” Another shaky breath, with not even the slightest effort made to disguise it. “I don’t feel like I have to pretend to be anyone with you.”

“I feel the same.” Vereesa says, softly so it doesn’t sound like a lie.

But she feels brave now, brave or made foolhardy by the mess of emotions still roiling through her, and she shuffles the small amount she can, drops her head down on Jaina’s shoulder. Jaina is steady, weighted and so very human against her, and for now at least, she crushes that sense of guilt like one would crush a bug beneath their boot.

She opens the single book she brought with her, starts again from the beginning. The words still flow over her, but she has a touch more patience now, her restless mind settled by the small movement of Jaina’s shoulder as she breathes.

In the end, Jaina is alive, and safe. And that’s what really matters.

* * *

 She wakes up much later, to the gold of late-afternoon sunlight and the soft press of Jaina against her side. Jaina’s breathing is still steady, and Vereesa doesn’t dare move for fear of waking her. Jaina needs whatever sleep she can get, Vereesa tells herself. She works herself to the bone most days, a fact only made worse by the insomnia she is plagued by. She can’t wake her.

She’s still an awful liar.

Vereesa stays still for much longer, until Jaina stirs. She grumbles quietly, half asleep, leans more heavily into Vereesa’s side until her mind returns to her, and then she pulls away slightly, hanging her head forward and grumbling more.

“Maybe I was a bit too comfortable.” Jaina murmurs, rubbing her eyes. She brings her hand up to touch her own shoulder, where Vereesa had been pretending to sleep only moments before. “Did you drool on me?”

“No.” Vereesa says, wiping her mouth with the back of a hand.

“I think you did.”

“I think you’re delusional.”

Jaina is growing more and more awake, albeit slowly. She leans forward a bit more, grabs one of the scattered notes that litter the floor. She squints at it, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I have water-damaged notes that might disagree.”

“You’re mad.”

Jaina turns to smile at her, crooked and half asleep. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I think it’s adorable.”

She turns away too soon to see the very tips of Vereesa’s ears go red.

* * *

Vereesa waits until much later that night to bring Jaina’s book back out, listening to her sons rattle on about their days. She still keeps them separate from politics, and certainly from the chance of ever entering battle, so this entire trip is like a vacation to them, no matter how much they needle her on ways they can help.

Giramar tells her about his attempts to imitate a spell he once saw Jaina use, and he has half stood out of his chair, his hands moving to summon a tornado of ice before she reminds him not to cast such spells inside. He smiles sheepishly at her, but won’t abandon the topic until she agrees to watch him try to cast it early tomorrow morning.

Galadin is just as eager, brings out from his pockets a great deal of pages, shoves them across the table until she can see his smudged attempts at making maps of Tiragarde Sound, the drawings recognisable enough to the maps she’s seen laid out in the Keep’s war room. He went out hunting, he tells her, which she takes to mean he went out exploring. He claims to have brought back a string of rabbits, however, and when she taps the scattered drawings and tells him he should mark down good areas to hunt in he nods rapidly, and eagerly gathers the pages back up.

Some things change, but the innocence of youth will hold them in its grip for a while longer, and she sends them off to bed wondering if she should be glad or worried about their callous lack of fear for the future.

She should likely do the same, but she lingers still, brings Jaina’s book out. For a while, she doesn’t open it, just brushes her fingers down on the worn leather cover, so old it has become soft, tells herself she is only dwelling on how well-loved the book has been, and not on trying to imagine where its owner is right now. Has Jaina slipped into sleep already, or does she work still? She knows the answer to that question at least. Part of her wants to slip out of her rooms, to sneak off into the other wing of the house, to find Jaina’s study and spend more time in her company.

But she has intruded enough today, so she just lets the loneliness slink like venom through her veins, and does nothing to burn it out.

She opens the book back up to its place instead. She’s made enough headway in it that it has started explaining some very basic spells, ones she distantly remembers her sons doing years and years ago.

But she feels a fool sitting in the quiet of her rooms, twisting her hands in unfamiliar motions and stuttering over unfamiliar words. Especially so when nothing happens, when ten tries at summoning a small shower of sparks does little more than make her hands ache strangely, in a way that she can’t tell if it is some tiny trace of magic or only her hands complaining about the unfamiliar movement.

After a while, she gives up, instead gathers up a quiver of arrows and the enchanted set of bracers. Strapping the bracers onto her arms feels strange for a second, the piece of armour clashing awfully with her nightclothes, but as soon as they are firmly strapped against her skin, a cool sense of peace settles over her, tears away the growing frustration from her chest and crushes it.

She still doesn’t know what potential Jaina saw. This day of failure after failure proves that. But there’s something so intoxicating about having magic pressed up against her skin, about reaching out to grasp it as easily as reaching to draw an arrow out of a quiver. Vereesa takes out one of her arrows, spins it in one hand while she focuses on maintaining that same connection with the bracers. Before, she only held onto the connection for long enough to draw and fire a single arrow, and it takes much of her focus away to retain it. It feels like she has suddenly been transported to the coldest parts of Northrend, or been on the wrong side of one of Jaina’s spells, frozen in a way that is more shocking than unpleasant. The air she breathes is sharp, almost hurts to breathe, and after a minute she breathes it all out at once, severing the connection in an instant.

Her lungs welcome the change, but her fingers don’t, growing suddenly and ceaselessly cold, and she drops the arrow when she looks down and realises it is encased in ice.

* * *

 Katherine Proudmoore finds Vereesa at breakfast with her soldiers, hands her a stack of reports and asks her to bring them to Jaina when she can. Katherine offers no explanation for why she asked Vereesa to do so rather than finding Jaina herself, and lingers only long enough to give Vereesa one last look, offering her a half smile no one else manages to catch before she slips back out again.

Vereesa ends up having to ask a passing Kul Tiran officer for directions, but she finds Jaina in the first place she looks, knocks on the door to her study to immediately hear a tired voice inviting her in.

Jaina looks exhausted, dark circles visible under her eyes as she leans her head on a hand, frowning slightly at the door before she recognises Vereesa, and then her posture straightens, and she wipes her clothes free of some invisible quantity of dust, her eyes settling on Vereesa for a second before she looks down and notices the steaming mug Vereesa brought with her.

“I made you coffee.” Vereesa says. She has to shove aside two large piles of notes to even set it down on Jaina’s desk, and even then, it’s precarious, and she spends more than a moment hoping no stray hand will knock it, ruin countless irreplaceable documents. But it’s worth it when Jaina’s tired eyes move back to her, and she breaks out into a grateful smile.

“Oh, I love you.” She says, reaching for it already, not noticing Vereesa freeze next to her. Her hands settle around the mug, and her eyes drift closed for long enough for Vereesa to calm the deafening drum of her heartbeat, wipe some of the shock clear from her face. Because she knows she doesn’t mean it. Jaina is tired, under slept and overworked, barely aware of any of the words drifting from her mouth.

Jaina tries to take a sip too soon, hisses under her breath when it doubtlessly burns her tongue. For a handful of seconds however, Jaina looks at peace, and Vereesa hates the way that shatters when she hands Jaina the bundle of reports.

There’s a half-dozen reports tied together, and Jaina flicks through them all, a frown returning to carve deep onto her face, something no amount of coffee would be able to cure. Vereesa hesitates, then leans with her back to Jaina’s desk, watching her carefully.

“Bad news?” She asks, and Jaina nods.

“There’s been casualties.” Jaina says. She grabs the mug of coffee with one hand, casts a quick spell over it to lower the temperature before drawing a long sip. “We’ve lost three entire ships over the last two days. And that’s just in our waters.” She sighs out, flicks through the papers on her desk, grabs out one inlaid with gold leaf. “There’s an offer of a joint war expedition against the Naga from Queen Talanji. I’m not even sure if we can trust it, not after what we did to their capital years ago. Maybe it’s a trap. Maybe it isn’t. But we’ll likely accept it regardless, sail off and start this new war now. I just…” She breaks off for a long moment, and sighs.

“I don’t know what to do.” Jaina admits quietly.

Vereesa moves to stand by Jaina’s side, reaches out and squeezes her shoulder.

“We’re going to get through this.” Vereesa tells her. “Together.”

“Together.” Jaina echoes softly, and her hand moves to cover Vereesa’s, keeps it in place. “You promise?”

“I do.”

* * *

In the end, Jaina accepts the deal with the Zandalari, and within a week the fleet in mobilised and sailing away.

The first night at sea is awful. Sleep is hard enough at the best of times, but here she does little but thrash, dwelling too deep on the knowledge that whatever war is coming will likely start tomorrow, and that she has no way to predict what will come, what new dangers they will have to endure.

She carries a small table and chair out from the galley below, unable to bear staying below deck much longer. At least here she can see the stars, hear the snap of the wind as it plays with the furled sails of their ship. The stars are familiar, and a corner of her mouth twitches as she wonders what differing names the Kul Tirans likely have, whether they too painted stories about long lost heroes in them.

There’s an old candle set into the table, previously melted wax sealing it tight to the wood. But it lights well enough when Vereesa takes her tinderbox to it, and albeit small, the light is warm and comforting. The light of it does nothing to hide the stars, or break the endless surrounding dark, but it does enough that if she drags herself close to it, she can open Jaina’s book, try to force more of its words into her head.

It serves well enough as a distraction, if nothing else. The words are still frustrating, as if each individual one fights with her as she reads them, but that frustration is preferable to her own fears of the unknown, so she reads still.

A board creaks from far behind her, and she can hear the sound of someone’s slow stumbling walk, their pace loud enough to be easily traced as a tired and graceless human. Vereesa turns slightly to see, gives a tiny wave as she sees Jaina, arms tightly crossed, looking as if she has had enough luck with sleep as Vereesa did. Or worse really. But Jaina’s posture melts as she walks closer, like frost under the morning sun. 

Jaina waves her hand slightly, and the light from Vereesa’s candle brightens threefold, and the sudden light makes Jaina hiss under her breath and shield her eyes from the light for a few seconds. All the magic in the world can’t stop you making ill-advised decisions, it seems.

“Have you had any luck with that?” Jaina asks, gesturing at the book in Vereesa’s hands. Vereesa hesitates for a moment, and then she lays the book down on the table, facing up.

“Honestly? No.”

In the candlelight, at this late hour, Jaina struggles to hide her emotions, and Vereesa feels as if she could read her a thousand times easier than any book. She looks tired, disappointed, and almost guilty. Her mouth twists down, and she moves to take Vereesa’s hand in hers.

“I hope you don’t think I’ve been pressuring you.” She says quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

Jaina hesitates a moment, then continues. “I only wanted… I thought you learning magic might be nice. That it might make you happier, or distract from…” She waves her hand broadly in the air. “All this. But I feel like instead all I did was give you another thing to be frustrated about, something else to stress on even while everything is going to hell.” Jaina has to cut herself off for a moment, and Vereesa squeezes her hand in comfort. Somehow it doesn’t seem to help. “You don’t have to keep reading this if you don’t want to.” Jaina says, as she runs the touch of a hand down the pages of the still open book.

She moves to close it, but Vereesa stops her with a touch.

“I do want to.” Vereesa says. “I don’t understand much of what it says but I… I want to understand. I would have given up by now if I didn’t want that.”

“But you haven’t had any luck yet?”

“No, I…” Vereesa cuts herself off, remembers in an instant the cold biting touch of frost against her fingers, the arrow encased in ice. “Actually, I might have?”

Vereesa looks back to Jaina now, sees her watching her carefully, her focus brought back in, sharp as a razor.

“You might have?” She repeats.

Vereesa tries to explain what happened, every failed attempt at casting spells following the looping explanations of the book, and that final attempt with the bracers, the way it felt to hold open the connection to the enchantment for so long. She stumbles over words, backtracks multiple times, distracted by the way Jaina watches her, her gaze almost too intense to bear.

“I have an idea.” Jaina says quietly, after she’s finished. She leans in to the table, close enough to brush Vereesa’s side as she moves, and drags her book in closer. She flicks through pages, searching, lands on one Vereesa hasn’t read yet.

“I doubt we will get much sleep tonight.” Jaina says, and taps the page. “So why don’t we try this one? Together, this time. I’ll help.”

Vereesa frowns, but she pulls the book back from Jaina. Looks down at the pages and tries not to feel intimidated by the amount of text covering it, only broken up by a single small diagram, some small swirling thing that makes her head spin. “Frostbolt?”

“Yes. I was thinking…” Jaina starts.

“That’s always dangerous.” Vereesa says quietly, and Jaina slaps her shoulder lightly.

“But I don’t think reading a hundred old books is going to help you the way it did for me. I really should have thought of that before, and not gotten quite so caught up in the thrill of it all, but still. I don’t think words illustrate the way magic feels to you, that your kind of understanding is more… kinetic. Like… tracking, or hunting. Picking up evidence from the things you observe and feel, boiling it all down into a single answer, a guiding path.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Jaina leans in close. “I think there’s a lot you do understand about magic. But it’s all intuitive, guesses made on the way it feels, and not from theories or any kind of rote learning. I’ve been trying to teach you the wrong way. No wonder it never worked.”

Jaina slowly takes Vereesa’s hands, moves them into place, one hand hovering over the other, a small space of air in between. And then she stands back, leaves Vereesa sitting, still holding her hands in the same position, trying not to feel like a fool once more.

“Don’t think about what the book said about magic.” Jaina tells her. “Try to remember how it feels, whenever you’re close to someone casting a spell. Do you ever feel strange, near magic?”

“Yes. It’s like… I’m not entirely sure. Sometimes I get flashes of images, or a sudden taste of something on my tongue.”

“Focus on that. The way it makes you feel.”

And she tries, focuses in deep, thinks of the taste of salt on her tongue whenever Jaina makes her ship fly, the warm buzz that fills her chest whenever she summons conjured lights, and the strange half remembered images she gets sometimes, standing too close to Giramar while he practises his spells. But still nothing appears in her hands.

“Remember your bracers.” Jaina says, her voice almost distant. “The way it feels when you use them. The bitter cold, the sense of frostbite, the way it feels when you open yourself up to the enchantment. And draw deep into yourself, and try to find that same cold. It might be buried, hidden, but don’t rush. Only breathe, slowly, and focus.”

Vereesa breathes, and focuses in. Let’s the rest of the world melt away, like it does when her bow is in her hands. The strange position of her hands is forgotten, so too the fears of tomorrow, even the nervousness she holds about Jaina. She lets it all flow away, like so many discarded objects floating downstream.

She thinks of ice instead. She doesn’t so much search for the cold, but wills it to come, imagines that tiny point of frost is back within her lungs, freezing the air she breathes, and focuses on it until it builds up slowly in her chest, until it feels like there is a tiny snowstorm inside her, turning her blood to ice with it. It fills her mind, washes it full of the blue of submerged icebergs, the hiss of wind against ice, and the dull pain of frozen limbs. And then she breathes it out, wills it to live outside her, until her hands grow almost too cold to bear, and she almost drags them away before a hand covers her own, keeps it in place.

“Keep your hand steady.” Jaina says from far too close, her other hand leaning on Vereesa’s opposite shoulder, burning hot. For a second, her concentration slips, and she almost loses control of what spell there was. Any other day and this amount of contact, the hawklike focus on Jaina on her, would steal her chances of functioning normally. But the cold is sharp, and the pain of it grounding, and she lets it all slip away once more.

And something is swirling between her hands. Only a small thing, but the cold of it is intense, and even half a spell is an improvement on all the failed attempts at before.

There must be some way to finish it, to tie this spell up into its final form. But Vereesa couldn’t understand the book at the best of times, and she doesn’t trust her tongue to ask questions any more. Instead she reaches out with her awareness, connects back with the wild twist of the spell in her hands, and asks it what it’s meant to be. It is almost alive, almost conscious, and it whispers back.

Vereesa ties the spell closed, and a small bolt of ice shoots out, slices into the candle in front of her, the light flickering out in an instant. She swears under her breath, and then again in her thoughts as Jaina throws her arms around her from behind, laughing into her ear.

“I told you.” Jaina says, more proud than smug. “I told you that you had something.”

“You did.” Vereesa says. She can’t quite hug her back from this angle, but she reaches up with her hands to touch Jaina’s arms, and bends her head upwards to the ever-watching stars.

* * *

In the end Vereesa manages to steal a handful of hours sleep, but she still emerges back on deck to the grey of the very early morning. Their ships are surrounded by dense fog, dulling even the tiny amount of light available. The morning is dead silent, no wind, no bird calls, nothing but the occasional quiet creak of the ship as it rocks in what small amount of swell there is.

She finds Jaina still awake, leaning on the railing near the helm, staring off into the endless fog. Whether she managed to sleep at all last night Vereesa can’t tell, but she has put on a heavy cloak, the hood pulled over her head. Lost in her own world.

For a moment, Vereesa hesitates, unsure if Jaina wants this moment to herself alone.  But she approaches her still, makes her steps heavy and loud, and Jaina quietly pats the section of railing next to her without turning, until Vereesa too leans over it to stare into the thick silent fog.

“Did you sleep at all?” Vereesa asks softly. Even quiet, her words shatter something delicate.

“No.” Jaina says.

Vereesa lets the silence linger on between them. She can feel the unspoken questions hang in the air like something physical. But she doesn’t reach for a single one, only waits to see if Jaina will talk herself.

And she doesn’t stare at Jaina either. Somehow this conversation feels easier to have like this, in the quiet of the early morning, hidden from even the sight of the other ships by the dense fog. Their ship rocks in the water, but only slightly, nowhere near enough to turn her stomach. It feels rhythmic instead, the tiniest of movements proving just enough to remind them of where they are.

“I have spent a lot of time thinking.” Jaina says finally. She sighs out slow, something low and almost hissing, and pushes her hood down. Vereesa glances at her only briefly, but a single second is enough to make her heart hurt. Jaina looks worn, and frayed, like an old rope pulled too tight.

“About what?”

“Far too many things. But lately? I’ve been worried about you.”

“Me?”

“I worry that I’m already forcing things too far, dragging you into my war. You could get hurt, any of your people could be hurt… Tides, we don’t even know if Boralus will get attacked, Vereesa, what if something happens to your sons?”

“It’s going to be fine.”

“Please don’t lie to me.” Her words cut like a knife, and settle in Vereesa’s chest like cold biting steel. Because she is a liar. An awful one, but a liar nonetheless.

Jaina breathes in deep, steadies herself. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Vereesa.”

After so long, honesty is terrifying. Even if part of her wants it. Wants an end to endless dances of words and action, of hiding everything that matters.

“None of this is your fault.” Vereesa tells her. “None of it.” She repeats, when Jaina tries to argue.

“But this isn’t even your fight.”

“And yet, if I had the choice,” Vereesa says, slowly, “then I would not change a thing. I’d still come here, I’d still fight with you, I’d still risk it all.”

“But why?”

The answer lies heavy on her tongue. Her entire self feels leaden, weighed down, like someone has tied her to an anchor and pushed her off the side, sinking down endlessly. The pause lingers on, stretches out until it’s an answer in its own right, outlining the shape of the _why_ that Vereesa still doesn’t dare to put into words. But Jaina’s continued silence is the most terrifying of them all, and Vereesa doesn’t even want to look at her. She wishes there were some way to shift topics, to cut Jaina’s focus away from her. Even if it is only a delay of the inevitable, an extra minute before the fall of the axe.

“Oh.” Jaina says, finally. “You honestly…?”

“Yes.” Vereesa makes herself say. She forces the word out through her teeth, like trying to pry some attempt at honesty out from behind bars of steel. It shouldn’t be so hard, but even with what thin mask she had burnt away, the terror of being known remains.

But Jaina quietly takes her hand, squeezes it softly, and lets the touch linger for a second more before she pulls it away.

“I’m sorry.” Jaina says, her voice as soft as the endless fog surrounding them. A quiet sound, but inescapable nonetheless. Vereesa tenses, holds the railing far too tight, and glances to Jaina out the corner of her eye, not yet brave enough to face her properly.

“But if I’m honest, this is a terrible time for this.” Jaina continues.

“I know.”

“There is so much uncertainty these days, and if we are to soon face the creatures of the void who knows what uncertainties will follow. And we- We don’t even know what will happen today, and I-”

“I know, Jaina.”

Jaina touches her elbow, until Vereesa turns stiffly and faces her. Exhaustion has deepened all the lines in her face, like deep cracks in sandstone. Pressure building up and up until even the strongest of foundations begins to splinter, and erode into so much sand.

“Vereesa, I…” She tries, “I think that we…”

Vereesa decides to spare her. “I’m a grown woman, Jaina. I can handle rejection.”

Jaina’s eyes widen. “I didn’t, I only meant… By the tides, I’ve made a mess of this.”

Only now, looking beyond the weariness in Jaina’s frame, does Vereesa recognise the same strain of nervous energy threaded through Jaina. But Jaina reaches up to grab a hold of Vereesa’s shoulders, ground her in place. Or trap her. Either way, she is stuck, like a pillar of rock buffeted by incoming waves, unable to move or escape from her place.

Jaina visibly takes in a breath, exhales slowly. “I cannot say what today will bring,” she says carefully, “Nor tomorrow, or any day after that. And that uncertainty unsettles me. I have so many responsibilities, as do you. A family and a people to protect. But I… I don’t know if it is right, to ignore the more mundane of fears and desires.”

“What are you saying?” Vereesa says softly. The nervous energy twisting through her grows worse still, turns into an electrical storm within her chest, sending off sparks she almost thinks could be visible.

Jaina’s hands are burning hot, and she digs them in tighter into the fabric of Vereesa’s shirt. There’s something swimming in her eyes, a swirling confused mess of emotions that has Vereesa convinced she will talk more, on and on, endless mazes of words that will trap Vereesa within them, trying fruitlessly to carve her way out and into a meaning she can understand.

“I think I do want you.” Jaina says instead. “And I know there is a much longer conversation to be had on this, even if now is not the time. But that is the truth. As honest as I dare.”

Somehow the fear still remains. And maybe the fears of rejection are gone, but there are still a thousand other stresses. What if it doesn’t work out, and an ugly breakup only drives a wedge between them. What if something happens today, or tomorrow, or in any thousands of dangerous days to come. What if, what if, what if. Fear has been drowning Vereesa for far too long.

“May I kiss you?” She asks, honest in turn.

A smile worms its way onto Jaina’s face, a flitting, nervous thing, but it still lights up Jaina’s face, eases some of the exhaustion from her. “Yes.” Jaina says, but she is already leaning in, the hands on Vereesa’s shoulders now only serving to pull her closer. Jaina’s touch is still burning hot, and Vereesa can’t tell if it’s her magic she can sense, or only the intensity of the woman herself. Whichever it is, it brands Vereesa’s skin, and she can feel the fears of a lifetime start to melt away, like an iceberg drifting into warmer waters. She’s not free yet, not quite. But she will be.

And the fog that surrounds them will lift eventually. But for now, this quiet morning is theirs alone.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_One month later_

* * *

Dawn struggles to break with shreds of night lingering long past when it should, opening into a clouded, miserable morning.

Jaina barely slept. The shifted focus and the new enemy to fear means little more than another dragged out war, and her mind is too worn to stop her from settling back into her usual habits. Long nights, early mornings, she can’t seem to make her mind _stop_ for long enough for her to sleep. She doesn’t want her mother worrying, doesn’t want Tandred to make another thinly veiled note of concern masquerading as a joke. She slips out of the Keep instead, dresses warm and sneaks out a side door, thankful that her family sleep so heavily.

It’s early, for most. But the docks are a hive of activity when she approaches, fishermen securing their boats and dragging in the days catch, calling out to each other in voices almost loud enough to wake the rest of the city.

One trips, swearing profusely as his once secure net spilling hundreds of fish out across the rough wooden boards. For a minute he doesn’t moves, just stares at the mess in despair, before leaning down to try to scoop them back in. Other fishermen move to help him, but they all freeze as Jaina lowers her hood.

“Lord Admiral.” The original fisherman says. “I’m so sorry for all the mess I didn’t- It was an accident I swear.”

Jaina has lived here for years. Politics and war have dragged her away, time and time and time again, and yet. This has been her new home for so long, long enough for the almost-forgotten love of it to sink back into her soul. And still. To her people, she is still a stranger. No longer the betrayer, no longer a name to be spat at and despised, but also not quite another daughter of Kul Tiras.

She wishes there were some way to wipe the lingering fear from their minds.

“Let me help.” She says, motioning her hands in the air, feeling the familiar thrum of magic sing through her as the fish start to glow, lift into the air and back into the fisherman’s net. She is almost finished, and the fisherman is thanking her, moving to pick up his catch once more when she notices a strange object sitting on top of the pile. Something dark, something strangely still alive, pulsing as if it had a heartbeat. Her magic fades, and the last handful of fish splatter back on the dock.

“Lord Admiral?” Another fisherman says. She doesn’t look back at him, or respond, just stares.

It’s a deep, deep violet, edging into black. It looks almost like a jellyfish, but too large, too strangely shaped, and it moves slightly in the morning breeze, almost as if it were shivering. The other fishermen notice, fall quiet, and one approaches it slowly, makes to pick it up.

“Don’t.” She says sharply, making the man flinch and step back as she moves forward. She summons a staff made of ice into her hand, jabs at the thing lightly, watches the angry ripple of its colours. Black and deep purple, swirling together blindingly, moving, breathing, living.

Oh no.

_Take me_. It whispers, crawling into her mind. _Take me and I will make you strong. I will make your nation strong, and all of Azeroth will burn before you fall._

She stabs it, driving ice into its centre until she can feel it pass through the creature and touch wood. Then she lifts the staff out, and stabs it back in. Over, and over, until the thing hisses and screams inside her mind, and then more. Until it falls quiet, until its form melts away, twists into smoky ash.

And then she stands there, breathing heavily, trying to scrub the memory of its creeping voice out of her mind.

“Did any of you hear it?” She says quietly, looking up finally into the shocked faces of the men and women standing around. Many nod, and most others look too afraid to respond at all.

She gives herself a moment more, to breathe and to let that immediate flush of fear pass through her, and then she lifts her head, twists herself back into the persona of the fearless admiral. The leader her people need.

“Search through everyone’s catch.” Jaina says, voice ringing clear. “No matter how long it takes. And if you find any more of those… things? Destroy them.”

* * *

They don’t find anything else, that day. But that knowledge, and whatever thin comfort it brings, is only found after hours and hours of work. They shift through every fisherman’s haul, every pile of equipment, every single ship on the docks, and jump at every shadow, hear screams if anything is thought to move when it shouldn’t. Given how on edge everyone is, that happens more often than not.

Jaina spends all day run off her feet, torn between organising search crews, trying to design search protocol for the future, and searching things herself. By the time the sun sets that day, the whole of Boralus has been upturned and examined. They find a lot of useless things, but no other signs of the Void. Somehow that is almost worse, keeps those awful paranoid thoughts lingering in her mind, has her convinced that there is surely something else they haven’t found yet, waiting, ignored.

She sends several ships out to search for any strange signs in the ocean itself, Tandred insisting on being the one to go furthest out. Whether he is brave or foolhardy, she can’t tell. He has his crew organised and his ship stocked before she even has the chance to give him the order.

“I’ll head north.” He tells her on the docks, watching the last few crates of supplies be brought onboard. “Check on the islands up there.”

“Be cautious.” She tells him, and he nods.

Jaina considers stepping in to hug him, but she hesitates, unsure. She doesn’t know if he’d welcome the embrace, or if he’d only be willing to tolerate her company, while whispering _traitor_ in his heart of hearts for every moment that she is near. He cuts that thought off as gathers her in a brief hug just before he turns and boards his ship.

And she lets him go, foolish in turn, thinking in that brief moment before he leaves that she will be glad to know he will search properly.

As soon as it is too late to call him back, she starts to fear whether he will return at all.

She squashes that thought far, far down.

Katherine finds her pacing in the library long after the sun has set, and drags her back to her room, says a lot of words that don’t quite manage to sink into her mind, but she can guess at them regardless, something about patience, and trust, and not tearing herself into shreds over something she has no control over.

She doesn’t stay as long as Jaina would like, briefly mentions that Jaina should just rest for now, let the morning come with what news it will. And really, she wants to. She wants to have the security of mind necessary to just put everything aside and sleep, to be able to trust that Kul Tiras will not burn in her sleep. But it’s hardly surprising that that doesn’t work, that she finds her mind whirling in confusing ways and finds herself sneaking back into the library with nothing but a small summoned light in hand, pulling book after book off the shelves until she is surrounded by old dusty tomes, using a system of organisation that shifts every minute until there is no system at all.

She is left adrift in a sea of paper. She doesn’t even use the library’s desk, just sits on the cold stone ground and lays out old sailing logs, the aged records she was so careful to preserve and keep after she returned home to Kul Tiras, ruins the careful organisation they once had. She almost moves to the back corner of the library, but as she turns the corner, she hesitates, her movements stilled by the sight of still open books she finds there, the small pile of paperwork that isn’t hers. The sight makes her feel so suddenly lonely, strikes the longing for nothing more complicated than simple companionship.

It reminds her of how often she finds Vereesa here, quietly copying out runes from one of Jaina’s tomes on magic, or reading over her own endless paperwork. Vereesa always hears her coming, but she always pretends she doesn’t, hiding the smallest of smiles behind paper as Jaina approaches and slips into the space Vereesa so conveniently left for her.

But tonight, the corner is empty.

And the night is so cold, so inexplicably terrifying, filled with endless shadows and fears of the unknown. It makes Jaina feel as if she has teleported deep underwater, where she can only just see the surface, if she focuses, but in every second, the pressure increases, and her breath runs dry, and even that she was once certain of drifts from her fingers, like rope from the grip of a long dead sailor.

The stone allows the cold of Boralus to sink deep into her skin from everywhere it touches, and in the dark, alone, Jaina fears she may just go mad.

Sleep will elude her tonight, she knows. But she can’t handle being alone any longer.

The hallways surrounding Vereesa’s rooms are dead quiet when she knocks on the door, and she is left standing in the cold for long enough to begin to regret coming here at all, for indulging impulsive desires and not thinking things through as thoroughly as she should. Didn’t she pride herself for that once? For having clear thoughts, making the decisions she had to no matter how hard? When did that all change, when did that simple idea of planning before acting slip through her fingers like so much sand, leaving only tiny grains to linger, teasingly? The memory of brilliance seems to remain longer than any shards of it do.

The door opens before she can commit to leaving, gives her Vereesa, hair slightly dishevelled, wearing little more than her underclothes, squinting into the magical light Jaina still carries in her hand. Shit. She should just… This is too much, already, clearly, obviously. Not so much a step too far than a jump.

“Jaina?” She says, voice twisted by something Jaina’s mind is not clear enough to figure out. Confusion, weariness, annoyance? She can’t quite tell anymore, too twisted up on the magnitude of this transgression, too convinced that she has taken a hammer to the still delicate thing growing between them, as careless as a soldier tramping across a field of flowers.

“I need to- I should leave.”

That seems to wake Vereesa up, and she has a hold of Jaina’s arm before she can even start to move. Nothing hard, nothing Jaina couldn’t throw off if she really wanted to, and yet it is enough to make Jaina stay.

“What happened Jaina, why are you here?” Her voice is soft, gentle, lingers in Jaina’s mind, a strange tiny comfort. It almost makes the fear go away. Almost.

Everything tumbles out at once. “There was- I am not certain if you’ve heard the reports already but I found this, this _thing_ this morning, some creature of the Void snuck into Boralus itself, twisted in a fisherman’s catch, ignoring every single one of my alarms and wards, sneaking in as easy as… and it spoke, it whispered in my mind and… It cannot be the only one there has to be more, hidden away somewhere, whispering and corrupting and waiting. Vereesa, something is coming for Kul Tiras and I don’t understand it and I don’t know how to stop it and I just…”

Vereesa quietens her gently, opens her door again to usher her inside, keeps a steady hand resting on her back, like she thinks Jaina will run, that she can’t trust her to stay in any moment she is not touching her. That should be infuriating, smothering, but today has been bad enough that she lets it happen, tells herself it is only for Vereesa’s benefit even as she’s still stumbling around half dazed.

“We can figure this all out in the morning.” Vereesa says, whispering into the dark. “Alright, Jaina? You need to rest. Please. For me.”

There’s something quietly desperate in her tone, something that tears at Jaina’s insides. Tears enough to make some of that deep-seated fear break, to make her feel that touch too guilty to refuse, so she just nods. Jaina isn’t even sure if Vereesa can see that tiny action in the end, but she’s still here, hasn’t run or complained just yet. That says more than enough.

Vereesa leads her to a small bedroom. Small, but comfortable, one side full of large windows with a broad view of Boralus, which at this time of night is more vague dark shapes than anything else, even if Jaina has little doubt the view is spectacular in the morning sunlight. The room almost appears like a guest room, but there are too many decorations on the walls, a bookcase that is too disorganised to be simply decorative, and when she glances across at the bed, she can see tousled, unmade sheets, as if someone were recently within them. She turns around.

“This is your room.” She says.

Vereesa just nods.

“Are you sure? I really should just… I’ll just go home. That’s for the best.”

Vereesa steps back in, brushes down her collar with her hands, returns her clothes to a tidy sense of organisation, as if it matters, as if Jaina is about to go anywhere where others can see her. But she understands the action, in a distant kind of way. Understands wanting to feel like something is within her control, that can be fixed so easily.

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” Vereesa says, her voice falling quiet. Whether it is a reflection of her thoughts or just a fear of waking up her sons, Jaina can’t tell. “You don’t have to stay. Of course. But after, after all this. Tonight. I’d rather know, for sure, that you are here, and safe, than spend all night worrying about you. I just… You scared me, tonight. It would settle my mind to know you were here.”

Not yet satisfied, Jaina opens her mouth to argue once more. “Still, I can’t just kick you out of your own bed…”

In the tiny amount of moonlight sneaking in, Jaina can see Vereesa’s expression falter, see the corners of her mouth twist down as Vereesa steps back from her, folds her arms over her chest.

“I thought…” Vereesa says, but she abandons whatever sentence she was trying for, takes another step backwards. “Don’t worry, then.”

“Oh.” Jaina says, feeling foolish. Is it the late hour, the stress, that makes her miss the small things, or is it only her? A half blind sailor volunteering for a shift in the crows nest, unable to spot the dangers of submerged rocks before the ship has already crashed. “I mean…”

She kicks herself for the nerves that thrum through her still, for feeling just as nervous now as she had a month ago. But this feels much more important than it should, a monumental change away from the small nervous kisses they’ve shared so far.

“What do you want, Jaina?” Vereesa asks, her voice dropping quiet. Quiet, but the words linger still, swirl all the nervousness back up to strangle her heart once more.

“I want this.” She says.

The moonlight catches on the slight curve of Vereesa’s smile, on the silver of her hair, the pendant around her neck, flashing as she sneaks forward once more, slips her hand into Jaina’s hair, stands close enough for the night’s cold to slink away. “You know we can move as slow as we have to.” She says, her voice still so soft, whispering over Jaina’s skin, heating her further still.

“I know.” And then temptation consumes her, guides her hands until she is dragging Vereesa closer to her, and she steals a brief kiss from Vereesa’s lips, lasting for only just long enough to feel Vereesa begin to relax against her.

“We’ll talk in the morning.” Jaina whispers, regretting her words as the tension floods back into Vereesa.

“But for now, sleep.” Vereesa insists, pushing Jaina back with one gentle hand until Jaina complies, turns around and slips under now-cold sheets. The night is still so quiet, so sharp with nothing but the stark moonlight to break it, and cold in the moment before Vereesa settles in against her. And then it is like sitting too close to a bonfire, the heat burning down into her very bones, warm enough that she almost wonders if she’ll ever be cold again.

The nerves remain. Twisting endlessly. But if she lets much of her mind slip away, she can almost convince herself that this is no more than something they may have done years before.

But that only makes her wonder just how long ago their relationship really changed.

Jaina stares out into what little she can see of the room, through a corner of the window. The view would be stunning under sunlight. But at night, all she sees are strange dark shapes that remind her too much of the Void, and that strange awful creature on the docks. Fear sinks like a heavy stone in her stomach, too weighted for her to lift easily.

But when she closes her eyes, nothing but Vereesa’s heat remains, and the loneliness starts to give way, melting like the heavy snows in the early days of spring.

Even the sheets smell like her, Jaina thinks, distantly, drifting off. Nothing so obvious as a perfume but something far subtler, a scent she didn’t even recognise before but something she knows far too well.

The morning sneaks up on her, and even with a flood of golden light spilling into the room, sleep keeps Jaina entangled, the warmth she is drowned in more than enough to keep her well within its grasp. Then a slight shift, the smallest of movements against her skin, and reality come roaring back in, a tidal wave of sudden thought that sweeps away that once unconscious sense of calm.

A small exhale of breath against her skin, a hand touching her back, the curl of someone else’s body against hers, their head tucked under Jaina’s chin. Suddenly awake, she curses to herself, trying to bite down on the instinctual rush of nerves twisting through her mind, the one that begs her quietly, desperately, to leave, to slip away and run, damn the consequences. A foolish instinct, but one no less effective in confusing her mind.

An entire month ago, Jaina had thrown all her careful plans to the wind and let herself admit to desire, unwilling to let the chance slip away from her hands. But even trying to reconcile the change to her conscious mind is difficult. It makes her feel eternally trapped on the precipice between friendship and romance, unsure of how different their relationship would be now that the long conversations and longer nights that had been their norm have changed too, acquired a kind of charge now that Jaina only has to break Vereesa’s words off with a touch and lean in close to be able to feel the taste of her on her lips.

But they had done no more than that. Cowed away every time by fear, or interrupted by some new pressing business that cannot be ignored. And because somehow a month feels so short to hold within it such a magnitude of change.

Jaina feels another small movement, a tiny flick of one of Vereesa’s ears, and she opens her eyes fully, breathes out and forces all the tension in her to follow with it.

“Are you awake?” She whispers. It’s barely more than an exhale of breath, but in the morning, protected by thick stone walls, there is no sound to hide it.

There’s a pause, but it’s a heavy one, and Vereesa lies so suddenly still against her that Jaina already knows the answer. But she still speaks, regardless.

“Yes.” Vereesa says. Her breath rushes against Jaina’s neck, and Jaina shivers just a bit because of it. And Vereesa notices, presses a firmer hand against Jaina’s back. She is close, so close, and her body is a handful of degrees warmer than any human. And even in summer, mornings in Kul Tiras are chill, the cold of night reluctant to give way. But with the burning heat of Vereesa curled up against her chest, Jaina doesn’t even notice the cold.

Vereesa doesn’t even attempt to move away, even if she no longer pretends to be asleep, breathing steadily against Jaina’s neck, running one gentle but insistent hand against Jaina’s spine, the motion alone enough to make her shiver more.

And Jaina _wants_. She wants to stay, to waste a morning, a day, a week, to disappear from responsibility for so long that her mother sends out search parties, to ignore paperwork and the endless tides of war for long enough to forget what fear is.

But responsibility hangs over her heart like a knife, only waiting for the slightest opportunity to sink in deep and claim her. And no matter how much she may want, a life like hers exiles the more mundane of desires to the corners of her life, to shadows and stolen nights.

“We should probably get up.” Jaina says, feeling the rush of air as Vereesa sighs.

* * *

But Jaina doesn’t leave. Not yet. She opens a portal to her study, stepping out only just long enough to scoop up an armful of the paperwork that lies eternally scattered across her desk, and then she lets the portal take her back to Vereesa’s rooms. If Vereesa looks surprised to see her return she doesn’t comment, only sweeps free a space for Jaina to sit at her table.

Her table is about as clean and ordered as Jaina’s desk, full of discarded pieces of Vereesa’s own paperwork, half constructed arrows and what might be forgotten pages of some of Jaina’s old notes, papers left behind from any number of previous visits. But there is enough space now for Jaina to sit and lay down her own pages upon pages of work, tracing a finger down the edge of one page as she tries to convince her mind to slip back into its well-worn routine.

But her mind doesn’t want to settle. Its attention flickers instead, at first trying to catalogue exactly which scattered items on the table belong to who, and then to the rest of the room itself, noting each way that Vereesa and her sons have adopted these rooms for their own, taken something that had lain as little more than an empty shell of cold stone, and filled it with enough traces of themselves that even at a glance it feels like a home.

In comparison, Jaina’s rooms feel so cold, so empty, so bereft.

And then her attention flickers once more as Vereesa moves to stand behind her, lays one hand on her right shoulder as the left sweeps a loose strand of Jaina’s hair back behind her ear. But Vereesa leaves her hand there to linger a moment, her touch ghosting as Jaina tilts her head back to look at her.

Will Vereesa kiss her, she wonders. Pull her in for something slow, something lingering, something deep. Steal her attention away properly, to leave the thoughts of paperwork that normally drown her to be abandoned to the far corners of her mind. And despite everything, the confusion of this war, her fears of the unknown, her obsessive need to always be working, in that instant her heartbeat freezes, and she may just have given Vereesa anything she asked for.

But Vereesa only squeezes her shoulder, and moves back. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She says, and quietly sweeps out of the room and into the hallway beyond, leaving Jaina to slowly force function back into her mind, like trying to melt ice out of the gears of her brain.

Her paperwork is suddenly so dry, words and endless figures that she struggles to make sense of, leaving her reading and re-reading the same sentences, fruitlessly trying to force her mind to focus on trade routes and report after report of unverified Naga sightings, and she barely gets through a single page before Vereesa returns once more, the quiet of her footsteps ruined by a loud creak from the old door.

Jaina looks up in time to see one of Vereesa’s ears flick at the noise, and a displeased frown pulls at the corners of her mouth in the second before she washes it away, like dry leaves stolen away by a fast-moving river.

There’s a tray in her hands, but Jaina barely notices, her focus drawn in to the still steaming mug of coffee in Vereesa’s hands that has her half standing out of her chair to reach for, only starting to relax once she has it encircled by both her hands, hot enough to almost burn. But she doesn’t care, just drags it closer in to her and breathes in the twisting steam rising off of it.

“Oh, you are…” Jaina starts, cutting herself off for a moment, leaning back in to smell the coffee in her hands, trying to track down and pinpoint the strange undercurrent of a smell she can sense, something small but no less present. “Did you put something in this?”

There’s an entire empty table full of chairs, and Vereesa still slips into the one nearest Jaina, resting her chin on one hand as she watches Jaina, eyes focused. “Try it,” She says.

There’s an almost smile playing at the edge of Vereesa’s lips, and Jaina stares down at the cup in her hands, and then back at her.

“It isn’t poison.” Vereesa says.

Slowly, Jaina raises it to her lips, savouring the wash of heat from it for a moment before she takes a mouthful, only to nearly drop the cup as she finally recognises the smell, the strong taste swirling through the coffee.

"Did you put whisky is this?”

“Yes.” Vereesa says, almost smug.

“It’s only an hour past dawn.”

“Yes.”

“Vereesa.”

Jaina’s words do little to quell the amusement shining in Vereesa’s eyes, bright and magnetising, enough so that Jaina struggles to even maintain a pantomime of irritation. But there’s something hidden beneath that, some subtle emotion she can’t quite pin down, hovering just out of reach, like a word she can’t quite remember the meaning of.

“I thought you’d need it, after last night.” Vereesa says before she can figure it out, hiding whatever it was in an instant, like covering a buried chest with a fine layer of sand. “Tandred told me about it once, weeks ago”

“Did he?”

“He described it as a cure-all.”

“I see. Tandred thinks anything with alcohol in it is a cure-all.”

“I’m not surprised.” Vereesa says, stealing the mug from Jaina’s hands just as Jaina is raising it to her lips. Jaina frowns at her, reaches for the cup only to find herself grasping at thin air as Vereesa leans away.

“I brought food.” Vereesa says, using one hand to push a tray closer to Jaina, the motion moving several piles of paper with it. The tray is primarily filled with heavy Kul Tiran foods, thick slices of bread, grilled fish, a handful of fried eggs, more than enough to feed Jaina for a week. She hopes Vereesa doesn’t expect her to consume it all.

There’s also a small pile of delicate pastries pushed to one side, small elegant things Jaina suspects might be a symptom of elven influence in the kitchens, and she picks one of those up in order to inspect it.

“Again, I’m not trying to poison you.” Vereesa says. “You need to eat.”

Jaina considers it for a second, but even in this quiet morning, where her thoughts should be miles away from war and the Void, her stomach still churns.

“I’m not hungry.” Jaina says, dropping the pastry back onto the tray.

Vereesa stares at her for a long moment, quiet and still. She frowns, but only slightly, a tiny fracture in a mask of glass.

“Do it for me,” Vereesa says, and like waves erasing footsteps left in sand, the weakness in her expression is gone, and a smile is forced onto Vereesa’s lips. “I’ll give this back if you do.” She says, taking a long draw from Jaina’s coffee.

“You are so cruel.” Jaina says, ignoring what she saw. But she concedes still, picks the fallen pastry back up.

And Vereesa laughs, small and soft but honest. But even that is gone too soon.

* * *

Jaina waves a hand, and twelve reports hover in front of her eyes. She stares at each one for a long moment, tapping the feathered end of a quill against her chin, and then she waves her hand again, shifts the order of the papers. And then again, and again, and again. There has to be some pattern here. Some line of logic she can follow, some forgotten scrap of evidence she can pin together to slice open the hidden desires behind every attack, behind every strange shadowed movement. But nothing comes. She orders the papers by date, and then by location, and so on, threading together whatever might link together in even the vaguest of ways, and still she finds nothing.

It’s like trying to spearfish at night, throwing thin weapons into the dark depths and hoping coincidence will grant success. But there is nothing to find but jumbled words and endless confusion. She flicks the papers again, feeling frustration start to claw its way into her heart. If only there were some way to shine a light into the shadowed depths, to make that which hides within darkness reveal itself.

She looks up for a moment, her eyes worn dry staring at paper for hours on end, and finds her eyes caught on Vereesa, standing by the window, running her fingers through her hair as she stares down at a book in her hands. The morning sunlight is still pouring in, and for that moment Jaina is entranced by how the light glows off the silver of Vereesa’s hair.

She brings the papers back up to her eyes again, flicks through the details of each one. Two sightings off the coast near Drustvar. A ship lost to the north of Stormsong Valley. A handful of attacks far out to sea, all seemingly at random. And only to add to the frustrating lack of connection between each scrap of evidence is the intel Talanji sends in each of her letters, detailing their own losses, her own theories.

But for all that shared information, Jaina has found nothing. About the only common link she can find is that every attack so far has come from the sea, and yet even that she attributes more to their own defences than any secret plan from the Void

The papers remain in her hand, but for now Jaina’s focus is lost from them, and instead she sneaks glances at where Vereesa still stands by the window. Those same enchanted bracers from so long ago are strapped to her arms, even if for now all she does is stare down at an open page in one of Jaina’s old books, running a finger along the lines of a rune Jaina’s can’t quite read from this angle.

After the third unsubtle glance, Vereesa catches her watching, and tilts her head.  “I thought you loved dusty old books, Jaina. I’m surprised you can be distracted away from them.”

She can feel herself start to flush, can see it in the way Vereesa’s eyes linger on her.

“They’re war reports. No one finds them interesting.” Jaina says, deflecting. It doesn’t quite succeed, but Vereesa’s expression is so warm, and she is so quietly beautiful in that soft sunlight that Jaina almost doesn’t mind getting caught.

“If you say so.” Vereesa tells her. The book in her hands lowers slowly, fraction by fraction as Vereesa watches her now. What is she waiting for, Jaina wonders. A sign, an invitation, an excuse? Will she abandon her work to chase after fleeting pleasures, she asks herself. And would Jaina grant them to her if she asked? She doesn’t even know. That’s likely the most terrifying part. That an answer cannot be given until a question is asked.

But an absent-minded shuffle of papers from Jaina catches Vereesa’s attention, and the warmth drains away from her face, dying slow like the flame of an abandoned campfire in winter, buried by the endless drift of snow.

“Don’t let me distract you.” She says, and raises the book back up to her face.

But she says it far too late, and Jaina’s focus is gone, and instead she sits there quietly pretending not to watch while Vereesa quietly pretends not to notice.

Vereesa lowers her book down onto the windowsill, still open. She closes her eyes, brings both hands together, and seemingly without her notice, the runes against her skin start to glow, something soft and blue.

There’s something magnetising about watching Vereesa practice magic. Vereesa has stubbornly persisted in it, and while her progress is haphazard, her knowledge of magical theory patchwork at best, there’s an almost primal artistry to the way she connects with magic, a sensitivity to the arcane most mages would dream of having. Most of all, she looks so genuinely happy when she casts a spell for the first time, like even for a second the afterglow of success has washed her mind clean of a lifetime of pain.

Vereesa breathes out, and just as slow, all the tension flows away from her frame. She moves her hands, almost unconsciously, and with one final sharp gesture, a small shard of ice spins in her hands. She breathes in again, unsteadily this time, and moves her hands apart, the shard of ice slowly growing in size as she does.

Slowly, in the tiniest of increments that Jaina can only just track, the ice expands, first to the size of her fist, and then to the size of a block of stone, a small boulder of frost that Jaina abandons even her pretence of work in order to stare at. And then Vereesa twists her hands again, and just as slow moves her hands back together, tries to crush the ice down into itself.

But the spell resists the movement, and a single creased line of a frown appears on her face as the entire room drops in temperature, and still the boulder in her hands doesn’t budge. Then, like an old bow pulled an inch too far, Vereesa’s focus splinters, and before Jaina can move to stop it, the spell escapes from her control and rockets into the heavy stone wall. Several stones around the impact crack, and frost spreads out from it until half the wall is frozen.

And Vereesa doesn’t make a sound. She folds into herself like paper, hunching into as small a shape as she can go. Even without sight, the failed spell must still be obvious from the sudden chill, the occasional sharp crack of ice as it settles into the stone, and with every second Vereesa twists herself tenser and tenser.

A dozen sheets of paper drift to the ground as Jaina stands, moving carefully to Vereesa, as slow as she can manage. She reaches out to Vereesa’s hands, stops dead when she flinches at the touch, but after a second Vereesa relaxes by just a fraction, enough for Jaina to gently draw her into her chest.

“You’re fine.” She whispers. “It is only stone and you are still learning, it’s fine. As long as you’re not hurt, it’s fine.” Jaina moves back a fraction, cups Vereesa’s face in her hands. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No.” Vereesa says. She hesitates a moment, then continues. “Just thoroughly embarrassed.”

“Then that is all that really matters.”

Comforting Vereesa isn’t new. But trying to do so while they are tangled in the confusing mess of their current relationship is, and Jaina flounders for a moment, wondering about what exactly she is supposed to do, if such things are expected to change. But Vereesa seems to appreciate just being held, the wiry tension in her frame melting away in every second, so Jaina just pulls her back in.

“I will help you master this.” Jaina says against Vereesa’s shoulder. “If you would like me to.”

“But you have so much work, what if-”

“It can wait.” Jaina says, wanting to believe her own words as truth.

* * *

The long years of war have worn away much of their desire for formality, and by the time Jaina enters the war room in late afternoon her officers have already filled it with piles upon piles of maps, books, along with the endless notes that Jaina seems to attract without thought.

The few officers there salute loosely, drag her into an argument on whether or not they should recall all Kul Tirans ships back to waters closer to home. The fearful part of Jaina, the one that is still stained by suspicion, wants to bring every ship back to port, for if nothing else that would bring Tandred home, alleviate her endless fears that his ship will sink in the middle of the ocean, his body never found. Another Proudmoore dead.

But cutting themselves off from information, withdrawing and giving their enemies that much ground, is unthinkable. She tells her officers that, that as long as their ships remain in contact with Boralus, they will remain at sea. They nod, and switch topics, and it’s almost comforting to let go of all her fears and sink into debates, and arguments, inked lines on a map she stares at long enough to be burnt into her mind.

Strange that wars have worn a deep enough groove in her soul that the predictability of battle maps and endless reports settles her head, brings focus back. She’s almost glad for it, really. Without it, there would be nothing to distract her from the dreams, the whisper of screams that still echo within her mind.

Katherine sweeps through hours later, leaves a plate of bread sitting on a pile of books, a steaming pot of tea next to it. She doesn’t even have time to pressure anyone into eating before they all reach for it. The tea is strong, the bread still warm. A breath of normality, even in troubled times.

She pulls Jaina aside while her officers are distracted, fixes her ruffled collar with a slightly stern look. She doesn’t speak at all, only hands Jaina a folded note and sweeps back out, on her way to another meeting with the other Houses. Politics stop for no war, it seems. Jaina doesn’t envy her.

The note is a rushed thing, something approaching a scrawl from a normally controlled hand. She recognises it still, smiles a bit at the lines that loop too much for Common letters, the practiced and almost artful signature that graces the bottom. Vereesa’s hand. But then it hits her, that the only reason she would send a note is if she were already gone.

It’s never enough. But wishing for more is impossible.

_I have left again on another patrol,_ it says, the brief words enough to make Jaina’s heart sink, _and I have taken Galadin with me. Watch over Giramar, if you can._

And then, at the very bottom, in an even more rushed hand, like it had been written seconds before handing the message over: _Stay safe, Jaina._

Jaina folds the note neatly, tucks it away. There will be a time for softness, she tells herself. Time to dwell, to give themselves the space to just exist. Now isn’t that time. Instead, she turns back to her officers, clears her throat until they all turn back to their maps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's at the very least one more chapter to this, and maybe more? we'll see.  
> I hope no one minds that i'm continuing this lol. it just stuck with me.
> 
> edit: i added some tags bc someone uploaded this while sleep deprived and Forgot To so i'm sorry about that


	3. Chapter 3

Their campfire murmurs quietly to itself, dying down to a soft whisper before Vereesa concedes to throwing it a handful more pieces of wood. She listens to its soft conversation, sitting too close to its reaching flames, hoping it will keep her warm. It tries valiantly, but the chill of the early Kul Tiran morning devours much of its heat, and Vereesa is left to endure that awful duality of temperature, half of her too cold, the other too hot.

But in the early hour, with no other sounds or distractions to drown it, the forest sings for her. It’s nothing grand. No wild orchestra, no siren’s song. But the song is there, subtle and sweet, a quiet noise that strikes longing deep within her heart. A melody spun out of the whisper of leaves in the wind, the soft birdsong, the rustle of undergrowth as any number of small creatures’ race through it.

She spends far too much time in cities, she realises, trapped within confining stone and the chains of politics, and not nearly enough time in nature. The love of it has sunk deep under her skin, wrapped vines around her heart, and it is only now that she is free to fill her lungs with the cold forest air that she remembers that.

When she was young, this was what she wanted most. To escape from under the watchful eye of Alleria, to sneak into the forest and wander until night fell and she had to find her way back to the Spire by following the stars. To feel so truly, aimlessly free, even for a moment.

But Vereesa only ever did that once, and never again, too cowed by her sister’s fear after she returned. And these days, she carries too much responsibility on her shoulders to be so callous. Even now, even here, she doesn’t relax, keeps sneaking glances at Galadin’s sleeping form.

This trip is not dangerous, Vereesa is assured of that. Assured enough to travel by foot, to leave even her hearthstone behind. She sends her rangers out regularly on patrols, and none of them have ever stumbled across any signs of Naga this far inland. Even still, anxiety still coils in the back of her mind like a snake. Vereesa is nowhere near as brave as she would like to be, and she would almost rather her sons remain sheltered in Boralus until every war possible has ended.

But their world is dangerous, and one day they will need to be strong. And gilded bars can still form a cage.

So, she stays. The fire builds up again, and the cold wind blows, until Vereesa is half-burnt and half-frozen, torn between two worlds, each as terrifying as each other. Hidden here in the forest, in the early morning, miles from Boralus with her son still asleep, her heart still aches for that fleeting chance to no longer be alone.

But Jaina has her own wars to fight. And anything Vereesa has to offer will never be anything but secondary.

The wind caresses her gently, its touch as careful and as soft as a new lover. But so deeply cold, creeping under her armour, under her skin, staining her bone deep. It slices her open, and brings every one of her awful secrets to light.

Vereesa wraps her arms around herself, and tilts her head upwards to look out across the slowly lightening sky. It is dark still, but light is beginning to mix through it, breaking the once impenetrable night sky into little more than swirls of dark smoke, fading with every minute.

In a moment, she will wake Galadin, and they will begin their work in earnest. But for now, even if her mind swirls and twists in unpleasant ways, Vereesa wants this morning to herself.

* * *

The morning stays soft, but its quiet is broken all too soon by Galadin’s excited voice, rising in pitch with every word. He struggles to keep pace with her, constantly dancing ahead to point out every single thing he notices, a small deer track, a glimpse of rabbits in the undergrowth, a tune of birdsong he recognises. The forest has possessed him, animated him until he is just another dry leaf soaring in the breeze.

Then he stops dead still for a moment, tilting his head to one side. For that single second, he is completely still, as focused as any ranger in their element. Then another heartbeat passes, and he swings round to face her.

“There’s a river just ahead.” He announces, pride staining his voice through. He watches her expectantly, bouncing slightly on his heels, the movement jostling the arrows in his quiver.

Vereesa heard the river many minutes ago, holding her tongue to see if Galadin would even notice it, or if his excited babble would deafen his hearing, blind him until he could not stop himself from careening over the side of the riverbank. The amusement of it would have almost been enough to make up for all the time she would have had to spend soothing his wounded pride.

But she can hardly fault him too much for getting caught up in the thrill of it all. She certainly has too many memories of embarrassing herself in front of other rangers, or worse her sisters, to judge him on that.

“Indeed.” Vereesa says. “What direction is it in? Precisely, if you can.”

His face goes pale for a moment, and he goes dead quiet as he thinks. The excitement that once possessed him is corrupted into nervous energy, and one hand plays with one of his arrows, absent-mindedly drawing it out before he realises, and slots it back into place. His eyes squeeze closed, and he tilts his head closer to the sound of the river.

He looks less focused than petrified, and she spares him. “You have a compass.” She reminds him. “And there is no time limit. Don’t rush.”

He nods a bit too forcefully, rustling desperately in his pouches before she spares him once more and hands him her own. He handles it with shaking hands, constantly glancing up from it to look back at her. She leans in once more, holds both his shoulders, stays there until he maintains eye contact.

“Breathe, Galadin. Slow it down, and focus. Don’t worry about speed, about time. Aim for knowledge first, then precision, and then skill. With that, speed will come. But first, breathe.”

He nods again, slowly this time, and she leans away and gives him space once more. She doesn’t watch him anymore, grants him some small measure of privacy to work, and looks out at the rest of the forest instead, breathing in its scent. In ways, it is so very different to the forests she has known, from tiny details in the leaves to the unfamiliar birdsong. But there’s a thrill to be found in that discovery. Something familiar, and yet not. Years of potential exploration at her fingertips.

If only she had the time to explore it properly. If only she didn’t start at every shadow. If only.

Galadin taps her arm softly, and she looks back to him. The nerves remain painted across his face, but he holds himself steadier now.

“It’s north west of here.” He tells her. “One and a half miles away?”

She tilts her head at his questioning tone. “Are you sure of that?”

Panic flicks across his face, but he reigns it in surprisingly fast. “Yes.”

“Well done.” Vereesa says, and he brightens immediately.

“I have one more task for you.” Vereesa says, watching him tense. “This one isn’t a test, however.”

He nods, the mixture of nerves and still lingering excitement bobbing his head forcefully.

“Where would you like to camp tonight?”

His bouncing grows more intense. “I… Well…”

“Slow it down.” Vereesa repeats. “There is no need to rush.”

* * *

She sets Galadin to work as soon as he picks out a spot by the river to camp, watching him intently as he rushes to gather firewood, set up a campsite, and scribbles down notes on everything they observed today. Their day was quiet, uneventful, but still he manages to fill an entire page with notes, promising to write a full report as soon as they return home.

She spares him from hunting, and she slips into the forest quietly, returning within minutes with a pair of rabbits in hand. Vereesa was gone for the briefest amount of time possible, and still that familiar rise of fear corrupts her mind, twisting round rational thoughts like a loop of barbed wire, pulling tighter with every second that passed. But Galadin is still there, and their campsite is untouched. Vereesa can breathe once more.

Galadin takes the rabbits from her before she can say a word, and she smiles to herself as he moves to prepare and cook them, chatting all the while.

The meat ends up burnt, Galadin far too caught up in telling her a story to notice, and Vereesa too willing to let it happen to stop it, but even still the night is pleasant, and she is more than happy to let Galadin talk as much as he would like to. Happiness is so rare these days, and he is still young. She is more than content to let him be possessed by frivolous things for as long as is possible.

Vereesa sends him to bed early, and stays up late, keeping an eye on the now silent forest. She leans her back against one of the trees nearest the river, watches the faint glimmer of reflected firelight in its surface. It’s a small thing. Fleeting. A beauty that cannot exist without eyes to see it, and one that will die as soon as the fire does. But brevity does not detract from it, and she watches quietly.

Her bracers are still strapped to her arms, and she runs a hand down one, watching the slight reflection of its glow in the water. The magic is still cold to the touch, and hurts if her fingers linger too long. But the cold is familiar now, a grounding sensation she appreciates having on hand at all times, a kind of sudden relief that grants her focus.

Her hand trails to the very edge of the bracers, away from the runes and onto polished leather, and her mouth twists as she is dragged back to reality, to thoughts of the woman who made it.

For all the reasons Vereesa had constructed for this trip, a need to escape from the maze of stone that is Boralus, a chance to teach Galadin, and even just another crucial patrol, she never quite managed to convince even herself. It feels like she’s running. Or like she is trying to shoot herself in the foot.

It shouldn’t feel so hard. She shouldn’t feel so scared.

And yet.

Vereesa still wants. She wants Jaina to be here, pressed against her skin, filling the air with her voice, recounting knowledge of the area from some terribly dry text she read as a young girl. She wants more time with her, to feel less like every moment they have must be stolen away from more important concerns. She wants so fiercely, and yet when given a single opportunity, she still ran.

But still. Jaina has enough to worry about. A people that don’t quite trust her, a family full of strangers. A war against an enemy not even she can understand. Vereesa can only ever serve as a distraction to all that. And she’s not quite so selfish as to demand Jaina cast aside every one of her responsibilities to ease any of Vereesa’s insecurities.

And now, in the dark, in the quiet, she wonders if Jaina even noticed her absence.

She touches another cold rune, freezing even against the rapidly cooling night air, and breathes in slowly. Forces all the thoughts that had been chaining her slip away. They resist, at first, like a half-rusted lock refusing to give way, but as she waits, and focuses, they start to melt. She draws in that sharp icy magic locked within her bracers with every breath, and then makes it flow back away without using it. In and out, until she is lost to time.

She moves her hands close to each other, tries to summon just a tiny breath of cold wind. Something small, something controlled. She thinks through every word Jaina had gifted her with only yesterday, about focus, about control. About understanding a spell before trying to master it, trying force it to move contrary to its nature.

The bracers hum against her skin, but she refuses to draw into them, instead searching within herself for just the smallest potential of magic. Nothing comes for a long time, but she lets frustration slip away every time it tries to rear its head.

And there’s something. At first, she doesn’t notice it, the tiniest of sparks almost completely hidden from view, but slowly she moves her attention towards it, like brushing away snow, fraction by fraction until the buried object underneath can be found.

Vereesa doesn’t rush. She lets the spark move in its own rhythm, in its own time, and eventually it follows her gentle nudges, and slowly, like a river carving its way through stone across centuries, it comes into focus for long enough for her to grasp it, summon its energy into her hands.

The campfire flutters in the sudden wind, the gale almost strong enough to blow it out entirely. But focus remains in Vereesa’s mind, and she reigns the spell back in slightly until the current of air serves to build the fire up, rather than quell it.

And then she snaps her hands back together, ending the spell completely. And silence returns once more, hovering in the air like a living thing.

Too much silence.

The sudden flame of pride within Vereesa’s chest dies out in an instant, and she quietly moves her head, tries to angle her ears to catch even the slightest amount of noise. But the night is silent. No night birds, no spooked animals running across dead leaves, not even the slightest breath of wind. And it is cold. Deeply, bitterly cold. Even in the dead of night in winter Kul Tiras would struggle to reach a temperature like this, and this is their summer…

Vereesa moves to Galadin, rouses him quietly.

“Get your bow.” She whispers. He doesn’t argue.

The silence is oppressive now. A void of sound. It corrupts the very air, makes even the slightest noise deafening. She can hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears, can hear Galadin’s heavy breathing as he moves to stand by her side, and she flicks her eyes over to him, sees him standing tense, holding his bow in a white-knuckled grip. He looks so small, so young, so completely out of his depth. She motions him to stay behind her, casts her eyes around.

Maybe she is only paranoid. Obsessed. Letting fear finally drown her common sense.

But her eyes catch on a slight reflection of light, and she snaps her head back towards the river. Light glimmers off tiny ripples in the water, catching the firelight, the moonlight, whatever tiny fragments they can find. But the waters fragment more, and the once gentle light reflected in it shatters into a hundred separate pieces as a shape rises from its depths. And then another. And another.

Naga. Inland. Less than a day’s journey from Boralus.

She needs to tell Jaina.

* * *

There are too many for them to fight elegantly. Naga after Naga clambers up from the riverbank, leaving them no room to strategize before they charge forward.

And in more ideal circumstances, Vereesa likely could have fought them alone. But they have her off guard, and her bow is more suited to cutting down enemies from a distance than fighting those close enough to strike at her. But still, she knows this dance too well, ducks under every strike, flows like water away from every corner she is backed into. Given more time, more space, a handful more luck, and she could easily walk away unscathed.

But she had to take Galadin with her, didn’t she?

The Naga swarm him, and he cannot nock a single arrow in the space between attacks. He dodges well, but the panic rises clear in him with every narrowly missed attack. He stumbles once, only slightly, but it’s enough for a scarred Naga to swoop in and stab down with its trident.  His blow misses, but only just, slicing into Galadin’s arm, and a terrified whimper of pain escapes.

Vereesa throws her bow aside, slips into the gap between Galadin and the swarm. There’s only a handful left, but each is tall and muscled, and when they notice her movement, each one smiles dangerously. Their apparent leader, the scarred one that had just injured Galadin, slinks forward alone, almost patient now.

Before, there was time for hesitation. For mistakes. For faltering words and faltering actions. Now there is no time at all to think, and as the Naga starts to stab forwards with its trident, Vereesa steps aside from the blow, and rushes in closer to the Naga, grabbing his head in both hands. Before the creature can flinch away, she summons the largest bolt of ice she can within his skull, and the Naga shudders in her grip, all his living tension immediately going slack.

It falls to her feet, unmoving, but Vereesa doesn’t spare a thought, her now white-hot anger turning on each of his companions. Three try to rush her at once, and she dances with them too, ducking and weaving, but the cold murderous intent of magic is easy to summon now, and one by one they too collapse before her, impaled on ice. Another handful try to flee, slip back into the river, but she throws ice into the hearts of each one, only pausing for breath when each one lies still on the forest floor.

Vereesa tries to breathe now, to let the anger and the fear flow out from her, as brief as summer’s rain, but they stick to her like cobwebs, lingering in the crevices of her thoughts. And her breathing staggers, uncertain and rough. She turns to Galadin.

He has fallen back on the ground, has his arms wrapped around his chest like bands of iron. But he is alive, and the wound on his arm is deep but not life threatening. She collapses next to him, holds his head to her chest. The sudden movement jars something deep and painful, but she pays it no mind, strokes his hair softly.

But he only shakes in her arms, doesn’t relax or calm at her touch.

“It’s over.” Vereesa whispers, knowing what thin comfort her words are. “They’re gone.”

Galadin doesn’t react to her words, and she pulls away, holds both his shoulders too tight. “I’ll wrap your arm.” She tells him, hoping it will distract him from whatever awful thoughts stalk through his mind.

She moves to grab some bandages from her pack, and that brief pain from before returns, sinking into her side like a white-hot brand. Vereesa can barely drag air in through her teeth, but she ignores it still, focuses on binding up Galadin’s arm, on whispering thin words of comfort, hoping at least one of them will sink in through the haze.

But moving even slightly makes the pain hit her once more, drowns her thoughts like a tidal wave, and when she instinctually clamps a hand down on her side, her palm comes away wet.

“You’re bleeding.” Galadin says, and his shaking hand covers her side too, presses in a touch too hard, and he flinches back as she hisses in pain.

“I will be fine.” Vereesa tells him, almost wishing he would go back to how he was before, shaking and terrified, missing every sign of her weakness. She staggers to her feet instead, stubbornly starts to pack up their campsite with one hand, the other glued tight to her side.

She doesn’t get far before Galadin is grabbing her arm, stilling her movement.

“You’re hurt.” He says, his voice a note too high. “Sit down, I’ll tie it up-”

“I am fine.” Vereesa snaps, regretting it in an instant as Galadin shrinks away from her like he’s been slapped.

Her breathing is shallow, and moving even slightly is difficult. She glances downwards, sees a small sea of broken armour, and enough blood that one hand cannot stop it. Slowly, inch by inch, she sits herself down with her back to a tree, and waves Galadin back to her side.

Even considering the words forces her to bite down on her pride, but she pushes through.

“Can you help me with this?” She asks.

Galadin nods, slowly, shakily, but he kneels next to her, and she quietly instructs him on how to dress her wound.

* * *

“Your ranger isn’t back yet?” Katherine asks.

They sit in the war room, just Katherine, Jaina, and Giramar, alone in a room designed to fit far more people than this. But the war table is long, and Jaina likes to spread out her endless piles of maps, paperwork, and old books, so she doesn’t mind, likes the emptiness that lets her use this room as a second study. And Giramar had shyly asked to work with her, and this lets him spread out his materials too, albeit in much smaller piles than hers. It had been comfortably quiet, for a handful of moments, until Katherine had joined them all too soon, forcing cups of strong black tea into both of their hands before settling herself in at the very head of the table.

“ _My_ ranger?”

Katherine raises a single eyebrow, her expression otherwise neutral. “Your ranger, yes.”

How much does her mother know, Jaina wonders.

“She’s not my-”

“Jaina, please.” Katherine says.

And it’s not like this was meant to stay a secret forever. But an awkward dance is one best performed in private, where faltering steps may become strong without the judgmental eyes of an audience.

Feeling flustered, Jaina looks down at her paperwork, shuffles the papers into a new system of organisation just to give her hands something to do. After a moment of silence, Jaina glances upward, hoping her mother’s focus has faded. But Katherine is still watching her, just as carefully, and now Giramar is looking too, his gaze more curious than sharp.

By the tides, what do the twins know?

“She left on patrol a few days ago.” Jaina says, keeping her voice steady. “She is meant to arrive back today.”

“I am aware.” Katherine says. “Still, you are not worried?”

“I trust her.” Jaina says, simply. But her words still carry a hundred meanings with them, and she can see the intensity in Katherine’s once piercing gaze soften.

Katherine nods, quietly pleased, draining the rest of her tea before gently resting it down on the war table, fixing her too sharp eyes on Giramar now. Ever since Katherine entered, he has kept quiet, holding the cup of tea stiffly in his hands. He jerks into action when he notices Katherine looking, shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“You are allowed to drink that, dear.” Katherine tells him. Her voice is softer now.

* * *

Their progress is so painfully, awfully slow, and Vereesa hates every step. More, she hates every decision that built up to this. For learning nothing, for letting her guard down, even for a moment. For letting her son be exposed to this.

“How far is it?” Vereesa asks him. She stares forward, doesn’t look him in the eye. It’s bad enough that he saw what he did. It’s worse still that she is forced to lean on him so heavily as they walk. She can’t let him see even a heartbeat more of her weakness.

The terror hasn’t left Galadin, but it has cooled into something stubborn, something sturdy. This time, he doesn’t hesitate. “Two miles.”

* * *

“It’s nearly dark.” Katherine says now. The cup in her hands, and the kettle along with it, have long since gone cold.

“I know.” Jaina says, clenching her hands where her mother can’t see. But Katherine has always been sharp, always been observant. She knows, and the heavy weight of her gaze only drags Jaina heart further down.

* * *

“One mile.” Galadin whispers. They can see Boralus now, in the not quite so distance. But a day’s march at an unforgiving pace has left no mercy for Vereesa, reminds her of every moment of weakness with every step. She can feel her side reopen, but she doesn’t pause. Doesn’t let Galadin know. They’re so close.

* * *

Giramar is sketching out runes, drawing them in dark lines with shaking fingers, the lines crooked, the shapes smudged. He hasn’t spoken a word, not for a long time. He doesn’t need to.

“Jaina.” Katherine says.

“I know.” Jaina tells her, and moves to sit down next to Giramar, gently takes the quill out of his hands.

* * *

The door opens.

* * *

Vereesa barely makes it through the door, tearing herself away from Galadin’s support to rush a few steps forward, lasting only just long enough for Jaina to catch her when her legs inevitably give out.

“By the tides.” Jaina whispers, her voice barely there. “Sit down, you need a healer-”

“No.” Vereesa says. She pushes herself just far enough away from Jaina to pretend to stand, even if she is still leaning against her, even if her hands are still holding tight to Jaina’s shoulders, even if the sudden movement has likely reopened her side. “No, Jaina, you need to hear this-”

“It can wait-”

“Listen, please-”

“Vereesa, you’re hurt, whatever it is can wait until-”

“Clearly it can’t!”

And Jaina goes so suddenly still against her. There’s a second, before Jaina recontrols her thoughts, where she recognises the same flash of pain on her face as the same as had been on Galadin’s so many hours ago.

She can tell without looking that Jaina’s shirt is ruined. Soaked through. And she doesn’t want to look at her face either, to tell whether what they had has been ruined too.

When will she be strong, Vereesa wonders. When will she be a shield, and not just a ceaseless burden.

And then, like Jaina always does, she lets go and focuses on responsibility. On work.

“We were ambushed by Naga.” Vereesa says. “Up north. You need to send people to investigate.”

“I know. I will.” Jaina says. Her voice grows harder, steadies into something as immovable as the very stone of the Keep. “After you get healing.”

“Jaina, you need to-”

“Not this time.” Jaina tells her. She’s the one holding Vereesa too tight now. And like a fish caught in a net, Vereesa has to fight against the instinct to thrash against the contact, to break away and run once more.

Jaina releases her for a second, and only a second, her hands moving up to frame her face instead, her touch a fraction too desperate to be gentle. She moves Vereesa’s face, makes her look her in the eyes once more. There’s something deeply sad in there, but there’s strength too, as sharp as steel, as cold as ice.

“Not this time.”

* * *

Jaina stays by Vereesa’s side as long as she dares. It doesn’t help. The Priest doesn’t dare tell her to leave, but she knows she is no help, doing little more than hover by his side, asking one too many questions while he is trying to work. Distantly, unconsciously, she knows she is nothing more than a hindrance here, that if she were not Lord Admiral the Priest would have locked her outside long ago.

It doesn’t help that Vereesa is barely willing to look her in the eye.

In the end, Katherine drags her out, gentle but insistent, forces a change of clothes into her hands and then drags her back into the war room.

Politics stop for no war. And wars don’t pause for any one mortal soul.

It’s almost a relief to have something else to focus on.

* * *

The meetings run late, and then paperwork kept Jaina up longer still. Maps and drafted battle plans, another ream of reports, and the endless drowning notion that she isn’t doing enough. That she’s never been doing enough.

She curls herself away in that tiny isolated corner of the library, and refuses to let her conscious mind recognise that singular awful fact that it is still so empty.

It had been so comfortable to be alone in, months ago. Now it is just cold, and dark, and isolated.

She fills up the empty space next to her with paper, and pretends the dark feels soothing.

Jaina flicks her fingers, summons a single ball of light to hover above her, bright enough to write with, but not quite bright enough to chase away the shadows. She grabs out her quill, and, leaning against the cold stone floor of the library, she pens a letter to Anduin.

She keeps it informal, not even sealed with her seal of office, detailing everything they have weathered thus far, every major attack, every ship lost, everything that proves they are being set under siege from the sea. And then, in one last paragraph, her control shatters like ice under the heavy blow of a hammer, and she details that last attack, the one on Vereesa. There’s a touch too much emotion in there, stained too deep into her mind for it to not bleed out onto the paper, but she convinces herself that she doesn’t care. It’s an attack on an Alliance leader, she thinks, direct and likely targeted. They won’t be ignored.

She folds up her letter, sends it away with a spell.

And a reply is sent back almost immediately.

But it isn’t in a hand she recognises, and is decorated with all the formalities prescribed to the High King’s official correspondence. Just that is enough to make her heart sink, only for it to plummet even further inside her when she scans it. The letter is formulaic, stiff, and it informs her in the most roundabout way possible that she should wait to raise concerns for the next Alliance meeting. Most of all, it tells her that there is no help coming.

Anduin likely hadn’t read her message at all. For a second, she wonders to herself whether he would have if things were different, if their relationship had never been strained so. Or maybe, if he hadn’t been thrown into all this so soon, a crown forced upon the head of a boy almost too small for it to fit. Either way, whatever hope she had of appealing to his gentle heart is gone, and what lies ahead is only the trials of bureaucracy. A field of thorns, full of strangers waiting for your attention to shift so they can stab you in the dark. To think, that she once found a thrill in it, in dancing with words, balancing arguments.

There have been too many years, and too many failed attempts at negotiation for that joy to remain.

Jaina stares at that awful letter for one minute more. And then she holds it out, hovers it in mid-air, and burns every word of it to ash.

It’s late by now. Late enough for exhaustion to have settled deep into her bones, to drum with every heartbeat the reminder that she should go back to her quarters, to let fear flow through her, to be lost like a tiny stream converging into a river. To let tomorrow come with what news it will.

Jaina stands instead, and stumbles her way back down to Vereesa’s rooms.

* * *

It takes several long minutes for Vereesa to answer her door. But she does. Even if she only opens it by a crack, holds the edge of it in one hand, ready to close it once more with only a moment’s notice.

“You should be in bed.” Vereesa tells her.

“So should you.”

“And yet you still woke me.”

“Were you even asleep?” Jaina asks, and her voice wavers just enough for her to hate it.

Vereesa hesitates. And like a wall of sand attacked by waves, her veneer crumbles and melts, and her shoulders slump. “No.” She says.

Another moment of hesitation, from Jaina this time. Her head is clouded still, fear and stress and the endless worries of responsibility muddling up her thoughts until there is barely any room left for her to think. To feel.

“Come with me.” Jaina says, offering her hand to Vereesa palm up. There’s still a metre’s distance between them, that and half a door. But she offers still. Vereesa doesn’t move, frozen still, staring at her waiting hand almost as if it were a viper.

“Please.” Jaina says, and somehow its enough to make Vereesa sweep the door aside, to carefully place her hand in Jaina’s.

“I want to show you something.” Jaina says, slowly, each word measured. “Something to take your mind off of… this. All of this. Is that alright?”

“Yes.” Vereesa tells her, voice soft.

* * *

The roof of the Proudmoore Keep is quiet, but not unnaturally so. Wind plays with the stone, dancing around the carved blocks, tearing at Vereesa’s loose hair until Jaina casts a spell to fix it for her. Vereesa nods in gratitude, and tries to smile at her, but the smile is half-hearted, and it dies before it does little more than pull at one side of her mouth.

“I didn’t even know you could get up here.” Vereesa tells her. It’s a distraction, and a poor one at that. It is almost terrible how easy it is to tell that. How easy it is to know when thin lies and concealed truths spill from her mouth. Is Vereesa simply a poor liar, or have the years spent in her company only burnt her habits into Jaina’s skin?

Jaina misses the days when Vereesa never felt she had to lie.

“No one is actually meant to.” Jaina says. She tries to smile too, but it fails, and all too soon she releases that thin attempt.

The starlight falls soft over Vereesa’s shoulders, creating such interesting patterns of light in the angles of her face, but in every moment that Jaina glances at her, all she can see is those shards of blood-soaked armour, how gaunt and pale Vereesa had looked when she’d collapsed in Jaina’s arms. This beauty seems so cruelly fleeting, and she tears her eyes away as soon as she can bear to.

She turns instead, settles herself down on the very edge, brushes the empty space beside her until Vereesa moves to join her. And Vereesa does. But she leaves a gap between them, a wide expanse that she never would have left a month ago. But Jaina doesn’t want to push her, to have Vereesa run before they can ever really try.

And for a moment, silence reigns. A more awkward tension that Jaina has felt for years. Something so thick, so heavy, that she wishes she could slice through it, burn it like so many cobwebs. But then Vereesa leans forward, staring down at the streets far below.

Even at night, Boralus is alive, lights in almost every window, far enough below to look like a group of stars, new constellations yet to be marked down. And at this angle, they can see the moonlight glimmering off the silvery trails of canals, and the wide streak of ocean filling the horizon.

Jaina glances at Vereesa from the corner of her eye, catches that same shade of reflected moonlight lingering in the silver of her hair.

“It’s beautiful.” Vereesa says, the strain all but gone from her voice.

“I know.” Jaina murmurs, her eyes still caught in place. And she breaks that unspoken agreement first, tapping Vereesa’s arm and pointing upwards. Vereesa’s eyes follow the movement, and her breath catches.

The night is clear, no clouds, no trees and no overhanging buildings to block out the stars, and each one is on view, carved into the deep endless black. Vereesa leans back until her back hits the stone, and lays there quietly, staring. Jaina follows, but she leaves that gap lying between them, and crosses the threshold no longer, pulling her hand away.

The stone is deadly cold. It sinks ice into Jaina’s blood, corrupting her as swiftly as any venom. And she could combat the cold, if she wanted to. Any number of spells could steal that away. But she can feel the slight radiant heat coming off Vereesa, and nothing magical could hold a candle to how it would feel to have her heat soaking into Jaina’s skin, burning her from the inside out. So, she lets it stay, lets it creep inside her bones, and pretends it doesn’t make her feel all the more miserable.

The sky above is magnetising. But Jaina is caught still, staring at Vereesa while Vereesa stares above, careless to the cold stone below. That wiry tension she had been wound with brief moments ago is unravelling, and there’s something like a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Nothing wide, nothing obvious. But something is there, and whatever that something is, it isn’t forced.

Jaina only wishes Vereesa would look at her like that.

The silence is less awkward now, but it lingers still, broken only by the wind, by the soft sound of Vereesa’s breathing. Jaina breaks it anyway.

“Are you happy, Vereesa?” She asks, her voice softer than she would like.

Vereesa hears her anyway, tears her gaze away from the stars to stare at her. In silence still.

“Because I don’t think you are.”

“I’m not-” Vereesa starts, but Jaina cuts her off before she can so much as hear a shape of what her words would be.

“Please don’t lie to me.” Jaina says, and Vereesa’s mouth snaps closed.

“I never would have asked for this if I thought it would hurt you.” Jaina continues. She keeps her voice soft, but she can see the impact of each word in Vereesa’s expression. An imprint is left behind after each one, until it looks like Vereesa’s been slapped.

“Did I do something wrong?” Jaina says, “Because I only-” Her voice cracks, and she swallows the half-broken words.

But it spurs Vereesa into action, and she leans forward, crosses the boundary between them, has both her hands cupping Jaina’s face. After all those long minutes of the slow corrupting march of the cold, her touch almost burns. More intense than it should be. But, like fire burning away a deep-set rot from her skin, she relishes it still, leans into the touch.

“No.” Vereesa says. She’s close enough now that every word ghosts over Jaina’s skin. “No, no, no. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Then why-”

And Vereesa hauls herself closer. They don’t quite touch, not yet. But the heat from her is inescapable, like sitting a fraction too close to a bonfire.

Jaina twists one hand in the fabric of Vereesa’s shirt, anchoring her there. And it keeps her near, keeps the endless heat of her close enough to burn. It feels like diving into a hot spring, in those first few moments when the temperature is almost too much.

“Do you even want this?” Jaina asks. She can feel the heavy pulse of Vereesa’s heartbeat against her hand. A pounding rhythm she can almost hear, almost loud enough to drown out the lingering memory of Vereesa’s blood against her skin. She’s still alive. Hurt, but alive. Unhappy, but alive. Surely that’s what matters most.

Vereesa doesn’t answer for a long time, but the touch of her lingers, her thumbs circling slow on Jaina’s face.

“I do.” Vereesa says, soft but honest. “I never said that properly, but I do. Even if-” She breathes in, slow and unsteady, forcing air in through her teeth. “You know better than I how important this war is. I won’t steal you away from it.”

“Vereesa…” Jaina says. Words are so hard to choose, she thinks, to form into the right shapes while time is slipping through your fingers. But silence would only shatter things more. “You are not a distraction.” And still words are so thin, so hard to believe without the weight of action behind them.

Is she so easily turned cruel, forcing Vereesa into shadowed corners and stolen time, never conceding a minute she could use to work instead?

Vereesa holds her too tight now. “I am so terrified of what may happen to you.” She whispers, her voice so low it escapes as a hiss.

“Nothing will happen to me.” Jaina insists. She’s the liar now.

“Jaina, please.” Another unsteady breath. “We don’t know what might happen. And I can’t lose you.”

Jaina pushes her hand that tiny fraction closer, until it is pressed fully against Vereesa’s skin, burning it through to the bone. A brand she will always carry.

“I really can’t lose you either.” She says.

“But that’s-”

“Don’t you dare say that’s different.” Jaina says firmly. “Don’t you dare. I couldn’t lose you.”

Vereesa goes quiet, but her eyes still shine under moonlight, and she stares deep into Jaina. Cutting, analysing, her gaze like a bird of prey wheeling above, sharpened to a point as fine as any of her arrows. And then she relaxes finally, forcefully.

Her touch still burns, made only more intense by the arctic stone beneath them. And one branding hand moves, trails fire down Jaina’s skin as it drifts down, settles on her waist.

“Can I kiss you?” Vereesa asks, her voice little more than a whisper. But even the biting wind can’t steal it away, not when she lies a mere breath away from Jaina’s skin.

“Yes.” Jaina says. But this time, she doesn’t move, forcing herself to wait. And Vereesa moves so slow. Even if almost nothing separates them now, her movement is glacial, almost imperceptible. But she does move.

Their noses brush, and Jaina shivers, and finally Vereesa crosses that last boundary, kisses her softly. Gently, like she is afraid Jaina will break. But Jaina groans against her lips, something needy, something desperate, and Vereesa tilts her head and deepens it in a second. Like an ember encouraged to burst into flames, Jaina can feel it spread into her chest, turning all conscious thought into ash.

And time is burnt away too, unwatched and unmarked, until Vereesa breaks away, catches her breath against Jaina’s shoulder. But she doesn’t move away, or run, and after a minute the touch of her lips returns, this time burning against Jaina’s neck, and the echo of Vereesa’s laugh passes through her as Jaina shivers again.

Jaina stops her after a moment, makes Vereesa look at her once more.

“Kiss me again.” Jaina orders, and the moonlight catches on Vereesa’s smile as she complies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> katherine "i guess i have grandkids now" proudmoore  
> edit: two things: 1. idk how to change the double end notes thing so its staying like that dont worry about it and 2. im gonna leave this like it is for now. i had sketched out some ideas to make it like this whole big Thing but it'd be long as hell and idk if anyone would want that lmao so its ending like this.   
> (actually its three things) 3. i always hope that no matter what anything i write is at least interesting & somewhat enjoyable to read so like genuine thank you to anyone who read this far you're all legends.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title is actually just a reference to how slow i write lol

Vereesa holds the torn metal back up to the light again, casts certainty over just how broken her armour really is. A single strike, but a well-aimed one, shattering mail and biting into the woman beneath, leaving no pity or mercy to the armour that has protected her for years. 

And healers can mend skin, seal open wounds until the damage itself is little more than an afterthought, a half-trusted memory to be thrown aside, but broken armour lingers longer still. An inconvenience Vereesa hardly needs, not when plans are being strung without her, not when the armour itself becomes one more reason to bar her from the very patrols she orders her people out on.

“I don’t think this can be fixed.” She says finally, dropping the pile of broken chains onto her table. The sound it makes is awful, cruel and loud, and only makes her mood worse. It’s a petulant thing, a childish thing, and yet she can’t quite force herself not to.

But it’s enough to make Jaina jump, to look across the room from where she’d been sitting, writing a never-ending stream of letters. That’s new too, the hovering. They spend enough time together already most days, with meeting and plans, and yet Jaina still insists on finding excuse after excuse to stay by her side, her excuses ranging from almost subtle to beyond blatant. But Vereesa accepts them, every time. She’s never in quite so foul a mood to refuse the company.

“Can you not just get another?” Jaina asks, already looking back down to her letters. She writes fast, her hand flying over the page without thought, somehow able to write and talk simultaneously. There’s something quietly magnetising in the ways her quill moves across her page, quick but controlled, a dance so smooth Vereesa is half convinced she is casting a spell for it. Vereesa wonders sometimes, just how Kul Tiras ever managed to keep their affairs in order without her.

“Of this quality? Not easily.” Vereesa sighs out, long and drawn. “I’m sure there’s a spare set of leathers in our supplies somewhere. It will… have to do.”

Vereesa pulls a chair out, throws herself into it heavily. Jabs at the rough edges of the torn metal with a hand, then pulls her hand away when the jagged edges almost catch at her bare fingers, trying to bite down into her skin. She’s had enough cuts for a while, she thinks.

And she knows it’s unreasonable, to get so wound up over broken links, in how quickly what was once sure and strong becomes weak, brittle, more dangerous to those who would use it than protective. But the loss of it is just the start of the avalanche, the lone shout to topple endless tons of snow and ice. It’s hard to focus her fury on vague concepts, on thoughts of inadequacy, on fears of war. It’s easy to hate a failed piece of metal.

A hand touches her shoulder, and Vereesa jolts, surprised Jaina had managed to move without her realising. Maybe she really is far too obsessively caught up in a pile of shattered metal, to lose track of her surroundings so. Jaina leans across, picks up the mail and drags it closer to her, inspects the same fragments of metal.

“I’m sure an armourer could fix this.” Jaina says.

“The metal itself, sure. But not the magic. It’s more enchantment than steel.”

Jaina makes a thoughtful noise, deep in her throat, and pulls out a chair for herself, much smoother than Vereesa had. She settles into it, focuses on the pile of metal. She stays quiet for a long moment, staring at it, and then her head tilts as she looks back to Vereesa. “Can I take it?” She asks. “I cannot promise anything, but…”

“Take it.” Vereesa tells her, pushing it towards her. Even if she suspects Jaina will end up using it in some other research, funnelling what enchantment still remains within it towards some other spell. Though, at least then it would have some kind of use.

Jaina catches her hand before she can move it, traps it with one of her own, gets Vereesa to look at her. “Broken armour is one thing.” She says. “But what about you?”

“I’m fine.”

Jaina’s mouth twists down.

Just by a fraction, but it’s enough.

It’s a terrible promise Vereesa has made, bound not by blood, or magic, but only by the threat of disappointment.

Of Jaina’s disappointment.

And maybe one more forced lie may not shatter this, tear like once strong steel, but even the echo of disappointment is enough to tear honesty from between her teeth.

“I will be fine. Eventually.” Vereesa says instead. Jaina takes her hand up, lifts it away from cold metal and into her lap. “I am only… I can still fight. I’m not some broken thing.”

“I would never say you were broken.” Jaina tells her. “But blades cut deeper than even the Light can heal. We both know that. And I don’t want you to run. I only want you to be gentle to yourself.”

“Are you gentle to yourself, then?” It’s harsher than she means it to be, slices under Jaina’s skin and settles there, an arrowhead buried too deep for any healer to remove. She doesn’t flinch, but she doesn’t have to. Jaina looks away from her, even if she still holds her hand in hers.

“Promises travel both ways.” Vereesa tells her, softens her voice this time.

“They do.” Jaina says. “And your answer is no. But I am trying. And I don’t expect you to be perfect. Only ever to try.”

And Jaina smiles at her. Small, and shy, it flits across her expression for only just long enough for Vereesa to notice it. But it’s there. And it sticks in Vereesa’s mind long after she sees it. It’s enough.

She moves her hand, the one Jaina has so jealously captured, takes both Jaina’s hands with it as she pulls it closer to her. And Jaina doesn’t stop her, lets Vereesa steal her hands and press a brief kiss against the back of her knuckles.

“Sometimes, you are almost too much.” Vereesa says. “But thank you.”

“Of course.” Jaina says.

It’s a brief moment they have. Only ever brief, and only ever so peaceful with the shadow of responsibility looming above. But it’s there. And despite it all, the uncertainty, the fear, Vereesa let’s herself treasure it.

It’s the small moments, the quiet ones, that make her realise the obvious, she thinks. For time is so nebulous, so short and so long. Vereesa may yet live for centuries more, see kingdoms rise and fall, outlive more wars than she can give names. Or she may fall tomorrow, and have her name crushed into so much dust, lose herself into foreign soil, or more likely yet, be lost amongst the waves she still fears so.

And maybe it is not wise. Or practical. But Vereesa would still risk it all for Jaina, for this still-strange land she has pledged herself to, borne here by orders but chained here by a promise to a single woman.

And she would have done the same even if she had never felt Jaina’s touch.

The thought stirs something in her gut, something familiar yet unnamed, and Vereesa resists giving it a voice, and instead brushes her lips against the back of Jaina’s hand again, just to check if she’s still real.

Jaina doesn’t smile this time, but the corners of her eyes crinkle, a tiny, fleeting thing. Too small for even Jaina to recognise.

But it’s fleeting. Like all things, it sweeps across like a bird on wing, follows the call of something greater than fleeting thoughts and stolen moments. Vereesa lets her anchor her for a moment more, before she slips her hand out and stands up.

“I need to find that spare armour.” She says. “Otherwise you may yet leave without me.”

Her words are enough to drain Jaina in an instant, to descend on her like a heavy cloak wrapped around her shoulders. “You don’t have to go.” She says. “You’ve only been up again for a day, surely-”

“I’ll be fine.” Her words are a shade too sharp, and Vereesa wishes she could tear them back into herself. “I’ll be fine.” She repeats, gentler this time. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

“I will hold you to that.” Jaina says. And there still an echo of emotion in her eyes, but she doesn’t quite argue. Mainly she just looks tired. Exhausted, bone deep. And Vereesa knows she doesn’t sleep enough, has caught her still awake and working far too many nights to count. Most days she wishes she could make Jaina just forget about all her responsibilities, even for a handful of hours.

It’s a nice dream.

Jaina gathers her things, her staff and half-written letters, and follows her out the door. This is her least subtle of her excuses, all her grace run dry. And Vereesa can just about hear her thoughts, the way they linger on where her injury had been.

She couldn’t stay back. Not after what happened. In the back of her mind, the memory plays still. The danger means little, her own injury less still, but the fear in her son’s eyes she can’t forget.

It’s her war now, she thinks. And if she were not here, she would shed her blood in some other land, forever and ever, until there is a time when her sons can know peace. It’s a futile thought. But it grants her some of the control she craves, so she lets it linger.

“Jaina.” She says. “Give me one thing.”

“Of course.”

Vereesa stops in place. Nowhere she is going now is interesting, only boxes to tick, duties to fulfil. And Jaina’s overblown concern will only lead to her following at her footsteps, convinced Vereesa will fall into pieces if she doesn’t watch. The concern is touching, but not something Vereesa wants to indulge when exhaustion has already weighed Jaina down so.

“We have a few more hours until we go.” She says. “Promise me you’ll rest.”

Jaina’s hands tighten around her staff. “I’m perfectly-”

“Promises are a double-edged sword.” Vereesa reminds her.

It takes her a moment to speak, but Jaina concedes finally. “Alright.” she says. “I will.” And while she still looks reluctant, her voice is firm, assured. Vereesa would like to believe her, but habit settles into the heart as solid and unmoveable as stone. And promises mean little without time and intention to power it.

But it’s something. If only wars would cease, Vereesa thinks. Then promises may mean something again, and not just form another thing to break.

* * *

There's nothing wrong with Jaina's clothes, especially not with her cloak, not after she checked it before leaving her rooms that very morning. But her mother's hands linger on it, fixing folds, brushing what must be mountains of dust from her shoulders, and she doesn't stop until Jaina reminds her quietly that the ships are waiting for her.

And then her mother's jaw tenses and Jaina sees this for the obvious ploy that it is.

"I won't be long." She says, but it doesn't seem to give Katherine much comfort at all. "Vereesa will keep me out of trouble."

"Will she?" Katherine murmurs. Her voice is soft, betrays none of her thoughts, but there is naked worry in her eyes, and she hasn't yet let go of Jaina's cloak. "And what trouble will that be? Trouble that you make or that which you will stumble into?"

"Both, if I'm truly unlucky." Jaina jokes, then kicks herself when her mother fixes her with a stare that makes her feel like two decades have been carved from her shoulders and she is but a child again.

In any other time, Jaina might admire her mother's poise. Because while her worry is beyond obvious this close, from even a handful of metres away she must look just the same as ever, posture stiff, head held high, unbent and unbroken. But this close, however, she sees the truth, and she hates to be the one to inflict another unnecessary dose of stress.

"She had better bring you home safe." Katherine warns, and bundles Jaina up in one last embrace, but this one is quick, and sooner than Jaina would have liked Katherine is stepping back.

“Watch the tides.” Her mother says, only just loud enough for Jaina to hear, and more than soft enough to escape the hearing of anyone else curious. “And don’t stay out too long. Your brother has been at sea long enough.”

Then she turns away, leaving a hand held high in goodbye. And while Katherine had succeeded her title and her authority as Lord Admiral, her work is never done, and within a handful of steps a runner has already reached her side, handed across a message that kills whatever temptation Katherine had to linger, and she disappears out of sight.

She finds Vereesa soon later, already on board, staring over the edge into the water far below. The ships are still tied up, awaiting Jaina’s final signal, but already Vereesa has started to look ill, holding the railing tight enough to snap the solid wood.

“The water isn’t going to reach up and bite you.” Jaina tells her, watching some of the tension wound up in Vereesa’s shoulders melt away. But only some.

“I’m not so sure.” Vereesa says, but she slowly forces her hands to uncurl from around the railing, and she turns around and rests her back on it, tilting her head upwards to the sky instead. Jaina follows her gaze, but there is nothing in the sky, only the ever-present sea birds, and the still furled sails of their ship. It’s a familiar sight to Jaina, but maybe not so much for Vereesa, and she catches her watching the lazy flight of the birds above for some minutes more.

She’s wearing new armour. Or old armour, really, from the part of it that escape into sight from under her tabard, aged but solid leather, gone slightly grey either from time or dust. It fits her, but only just, and she finds Vereesa mindlessly adjusting the straps of it, tightening and loosening it. It’s serviceable, and Jaina already knows what Vereesa would say if she suggested she stay behind one more time. But even Jaina, more used to robes than armour, knows how oddly armour fits when it is not made with you in mind.

“You realise you can still-” Jaina tries, but Vereesa snaps her gaze back from the sky to glare at her.

“The answer is still no.” she says.

“Worth a try.” Jaina says.

Before Vereesa can argue more, she stretches her arms out, closes her eyes. The spell is familiar now, one that has long since passed from curiosity to habit. But despite that, the complexity of it remains, and there’s some quiet joy to be had from breaking it into pieces, step by step by step, and checking for the thousandth time that every section works.

She can hear the wind, the call of the sea-birds, even the distant noise of Boralus. But she stretches herself out further with her magic, until she can fear the very bones of her ship, the water surrounding it, the ropes that tie its restless spirit down. And then she starts her spell.

The rope glow, and move by themselves, coiling back on board the ship and tying themselves down. The next steps are simple, burned into her mind. She reaches out, unfurls the sails, tightens ropes and give the ship an extra nudge away from the dock. She can hear the ships around her, captains bellowing orders, ropes cast off and sails thrown open, but every noise flows over her like water, and, lost in her spell, Jaina has her sails catch the wind, and guides her ship to glide slowly out of the harbour, largely under its own power.

Jaina is only giving it an extra nudge. Something barely there, but enough that she is still a full ship’s length ahead of even the next fastest ship.

It’s a futile kind of competition really, but Jaina maintains it, at least until she breaks away from the most intense part of the spell, and notices how her speed has warred with the high swell and rocking waves, and left Vereesa looking almost green.

Then she just focuses on making the ship’s movements as smooth as possible.

She thought it was subtle, barely more than a tiny alteration in an ongoing spell, but Vereesa seems to catch it anyway, and one ear twitches as soon as Jaina has cast it.

“Thank you.” She says.

The sea is quiet but for the sound of water breaking around the ship’s hull, and the breeze is strong, carries them far and fast. It’s a fair day, good for sailing, but Jaina cannot quite swallow down the restlessness that floods her when she starts to wonder when exactly they will encounter resistance.

She had sent people out, she remembers, only for each to inevitably be driven back, by greater and greater numbers every time. There’s something they’re protecting, up north. This strategy, looping around to attack by sea, may just be enough to grant them the answers they seek. Or at least one answer.

Knowing the Void, whatever knowledge they may be able to find would likely only come at the expense of more confusion. A mystery within a mystery, chains within chains. It’s enough to drive a woman mad.

But for now, it is only Jaina and the sea. The wind snatches at what loose hair has escaped her braid, plays with the edges of her cloak as well, but Jaina makes no move to avoid it. Here, on a fast-moving ship, with salt in the air and the faint undercurrent of magic still buzzing in her hands, she can forget the rest of the world, even for a moment.

Some days she wishes she could feel like this all the time. Travelling forever, not lost but never arriving anywhere, where there is nothing to remember beyond how to sail. To forget it all, to let memories fade into dust, responsibilities into sand.

Life shatters that strange dream, as it always does. And Jaina is no longer quite certain she’d want to remain lost at sea forever, not alone.

Vereesa had been circling the deck, following the edge, much more restless than Jaina is too be restrained to one set area of space, no matter how large Jaina’s ship may be. Most of the time, she walks silently, but the constant movement of the ship catches at her feet sometimes, forces her to grab at the railing, or at nearby ropes. But strangely enough, despite her stolen grace, she no longer seems quite so unhappy to be at sea as she used to.

Her balance at sea has not yet arrived, but even as she stumbles, her expression remains neutral. Jaina can still remember the first few times she took her out to sea with her, the way Vereesa would scowl at the water when she thought Jaina wasn’t looking. And Jaina had told her several times that she didn’t need to come if she hated it so, but there is a stubbornness to Vereesa that doesn’t always come to light, and it showed strong every time Jaina tried to give her a way out.

Vereesa circles once more, and stops on one side, directly opposite to where Jaina stands at the bow. She puts a hand to her brow and stares out, across the sea and towards the shore in the distance, which Jaina can only just see the outline of.

“Jaina?” she calls out. “Come have a look at this.”

* * *

By the time they are close enough for Jaina to see what she had found with the naked eye, Vereesa has started to make details. More details than she wants to know.

A sea of ships.

Or what used to be ships, where now the broken remnants litter the shoreline of Stormsong Valley, from scattered trails of wood building up to great piles in the centre, high enough to overshadow any ship that sailed past. Vereesa cannot make out the great details from here, but she can still see the curve of hulls, the tall rise of masts, and the thin torn banners of what used to be sails, flying high in the wind.

Beside her, Jaina’s control over her spell stops, and their ship moves forward under the wind alone, slow enough for the other ships in their convoy to catch up with them. For a moment, Vereesa lets herself look out over the other ships, to the captains with their spyglasses, and the frozen sailors in rigging, only moving when their captains return to shouting orders.

There are no rocks in the harbour, not here. Vereesa remembers glancing at Jaina’s maps before they left, and she trusts that she would notice if an area so close to shore was beset by submerged rocks. Stranger still, she herself has organised patrols, all over Kul Tiras. Nothing to this scale could have escaped notice, not for long. Especially not by any ships that sailed past here.

How fast did this happen, she wonders. And why?

That last question is easy enough to answer, when she glances back at Jaina, and notices how pale she has gotten, how Jaina is still frozen in place. Vereesa puts a hand on Jaina’s shoulder, and even then, it takes her a moment to realise Vereesa is there, and when she relaxes, she does so forcefully.

“They’re taunting us.” Jaina says quietly.

Vereesa nods.

* * *

Jaina ducks under a long splinter of wood, a shattered mast lying discarded and separate from whichever ship it once belonged too. It slips her out of sight for a moment, and Vereesa immediately moves to follow her. The ground is soft at her feet, more sand and water than anything else, but there’s a sense to it, a balance she can find and a way to keep her movements smooth, her progress nearly silent. Not that it matters, really, not when she walks with Jaina, who strides through it with little thought given to how much noise she makes, or how many tracks she leaves in her wake. Humans. The thought almost makes her smile.

Vereesa finds Jaina waiting on the other side, one hand lighting touching a sea-worn plank. She traces it for a moment, but seems to find nothing, and shrugs.

“I’m not quite certain where we’re going.” Jaina admits, and sweeps her hand out to let Vereesa to take the lead, this time. She steps ahead, but only slightly, looks for tracks, scratches on wood, any sign that something has come through here. Or any sign that there is something to find, after all. But she finds little, ends up choosing a direction at random.

They walk for a while, in the quiet, with little but the sound of the wind to accompany them. It could almost be comfortable, if it were any situation but this. If they weren’t overshadowed by these hulking wrecks, if there weren’t some inexplicable danger lurking. If Jaina hadn’t become so suddenly, awfully quiet.

This part of the wreck is the same as the others, broken wood embedded within mud, and they have not yet seen a sign of anything more sinister than the occasional scurrying crab, but even still, Jaina has kept her tongue for several long minutes, until all Vereesa can hear of her is her footsteps, and her breathing.

Vereesa stops in her tracks for a moment, and Jaina collides with her back hard enough to almost push her over, if she hadn’t caught herself first.

“What’s wrong?” Jaina demands, re-balancing herself with a hand on Vereesa’s shoulder. The other stays around her staff, but the surprise has her use it to steady herself too, sticking the blunt end of the artefact into the mud. “Did you see something?”

“No, I-”

“Is it your wound? I can portal us back right now.”

“Listen to me. I’m worried about you.”

Jaina takes another step forward. She barely lifts her feet when she does, and leaves a trench behind in the mud, which rapidly collapses in on itself, destruction in her wake. It spooks another crab, and it scurries out of sight and under another broken plank.

“We can take a break if you need it.” Vereesa calls after her, even though Jaina has barely moved a metre from her side.

“I shouldn’t need it.” Jaina says.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It does! You were the one who got stabbed just days ago! I can- I can keep going.”

Vereesa rushes to catch up with her, and for once she doesn’t care about how much noise she makes, or what tracks she leaves behind. She takes Jaina by the shoulder, and when she doesn’t try to throw her off, Vereesa turns her around slowly, and anchors her in place.

There’s tension in Jaina’s jaw, and exhaustion plain in her eyes. How long has it been since she slept properly, Vereesa asks herself. She isn’t sure. There’s little wonder how badly this is affecting her, exhaustion forming chains around her ankles, dragging her down, down, down, until she won’t be able to breathe.

If only there were a simple solution. If only Vereesa could burn away the fear, and the obsession that makes the fear all the worse. If only she knew the words, the actions, that could bring Jaina even a moments peace. And maybe no perfect solution exists, but surely there’s something that would help. Whatever it is, Vereesa doesn’t know it.

Vereesa wishes, again, that she were braver. Or smarter. Or kinder. That the years had given her something other than the anger she has never managed to burn away, the fear that lingers in hidden corners, or the endless string of failures.

She reaches out with one hand, lets it rest against the side of Jaina’s face. It’s a poor comfort, she thinks, an awkward action to make, but Jaina lets her, and leans into the touch.

“Give yourself room to breathe.” Vereesa tells her. It’s too harsh a tone, she realises, once the words have already left her. Like an order shouted to rangers from afar, and not words of comfort to a woman already upset. She softens them, as much as she can. “Please. We’ll stop for a moment.”

Jaina still tries to argue, but it’s just for show, thin, unconvincing words not even she would believe.

“Do it for my sake.” Vereesa says. “I can pretend to limp, if that would convince you to stop for even a minute.”

She leads her to the nearest, least muddy surface she can find, a curved section of keel, from a ship that must not have survived long without it. She makes Jaina sit, but Jaina is just as stubborn, and she makes Vereesa stop too, drags her down and might have resorted to freezing her in place if she even thought of resisting.

The priest would love that, Vereesa thinks. Returning with frostbite only days later.

Jaina summons some mana cakes, and passes her one. It’s sweet, almost too sweet for a place like this where spirits lurk in dead wood, where the Void stays silent but cannot be forgotten. But it fills her stomach, just a fraction, and the thought is sweeter still.

Jaina looks older than she used to. And maybe magic will keep her younger than most of her race, keep her marching on long since time would have drowned anyone else, but stress still leaves its mark on her skin.

Jaina is kind, she thinks. Strong too. And maybe this is a moment of weakness, another stress to leave it’s imprint behind on her skin, but the essence of her is still strong, iron-clad. Beneath the titles, the magic, the history, there is still a woman with a will no winter could break, and no sword could shatter.

Maybe Vereesa is not strong. But she can be strong for her, today of all days.

“I can’t stop thinking.” Jaina says, finally. “Not just about this, about… Everything. But this most off all. So many gone. Their ships shattered; their bodies stolen who knows where. What will I say to their families, when they have no bodies to bury?”

“That they were brave. They will not blame you for this.”

Jaina turns to her, and her expression is strained, tense, close to breaking like the ships that surround her. “But they will. I cannot make even one misstep, one rushed plan, one ill-advised decision. I am- They still think of me as a traitor.”

Guilt is strangling her. It’s an old rope, well worn, but when wrapped tight around her throat it hurts all the same.

Vereesa slips off the keel and kneels before her, takes her hands and slowly unwraps the one wrapped tight around her staff. “Listen to me.” she says. As serious as she can. Like this is some vow, a binding oath, a knight paying allegiance to her queen.  “You cannot lay the responsibility for this all at your own feet. Or expect that they will all do the same for you. You cannot survive like that. And maybe the past won’t ever stop hurting, but,” she reaches up, touches Jaina’s jaw lightly, letting her hand linger there when Jaina leans into the touch. Jaina melts almost as she does, like a fierce storm wave breaking into nothing. “You can make it better.”

“I am trying.” Jaina tells her.

“I know you are. But you cannot shoulder it alone.”

That seems to break through to her. Jaina stands, and pulls her up with her. And while the guilt still weighs on her, deepens the small lines around her eyes, puts heavy weight on her shoulders, there’s a stubbornness to her too. A strength little could ever break, steady as stone. And tides may ebb and flow, but stone remains strong for centuries still.

“I think I can keep going now.” Jaina says. And maybe she should take a moment longer, but Vereesa doesn’t argue. Not this time.

As they start off, and Jaina picks her staff up once more, another one of those crabs darts out from the shelter of the wreck, across the space, and out into shadow once more.

Vereesa squints at it, tries to see into the shadowed corner it hid itself in. There’s something strange about them, she thinks. Crabs, but no sea birds? No other predators? And maybe it’s a coincidence, but it’s a strange one at that.

She moves to where she saw the crab disappear, and while she cannot see its presence anymore and can feel Jaina’s confused eyes on her back, she kicks the wood as hard as she can, hard enough that the structure above complains and she can hear Jaina draw in breath. And something scurries out.

It’s a crab, but the markings on it are strange. Looping designs in a black so dark she cannot quite make her eyes focus on. It’s larger than it should be, and while all the other crabs had scurried off without hesitation, run from sight as soon as seen, this one stays, and snaps at the air in warning.

“Tides.” She hears Jaina say.

Vereesa draws one of her arrows out, and thrusts the pointed end at the creature, drawing her fingers back as it snaps at it, slicing the arrowhead clean off. Vereesa steps back, convinced it will try another attack, but it only stares at her a moment longer before scurrying off, no longer into another shadow but down across the mud, where they can see still see it.

She makes to follow it, then makes herself stop, still watching the path the crab had taken. “This feels like a trap.” Vereesa says.

“Do we have a choice?”

“Not really.”

The void-corrupted crab leads them deeper into the wrecks. Deeper, and deeper, until they walk through broken hulls, stumble over half buried pieces of wood, and the ships loom ever above, watching. From here, it’s easy to lose track of their path, of what turns they made in this unmarked maze, walking willingly into what is surely a trap. Playing the game the Void wants them to play, only ever hoping to gain a single piece of evidence that they may use to see further into the unbreaking darkness.

If it wanted too, surely the crab could escape them, worm its way under some small tunnel only it can cross. But it lets them follow, waits in place when they take too long to follow.

Vereesa had told Jaina to teleport away, just long enough to gather more of their soldiers, but she refuses to leave Vereesa here alone for a moment. And leaving together may risk losing it entirely. It’s an awful risk, but a necessary one, and Vereesa forces herself to bury down that fear that rises in her chest, down under layers of sand and mud.

The tattered remnants of a sail snap in the wind above the wreckage of one ship in particular. At a glance, it’s a Kul Tiran warship, but whatever name it once bore no longer remains. Out of all the ships here, this one is almost whole, barring the massive hole knocked into its side.

The crab pauses for a second, and then scurries inside and out of sight.

Jaina moves to follow it, but Vereesa takes her by the arm before she can step under its shadow.

“I’ll go first.” She says.

“No.” Jaina says. “What if-”

She takes her by the shoulders, long enough to make Jaina meet her gaze, to focus on her and not the looming shadows of shattered ships, not on fear and not on whatever lies hidden inside. “If something goes wrong,” she says, “you need to be able to portal us out. I can’t do that.”

It asks a lot, Vereesa knows, to ask her to stop shadowing her footsteps, even for a moment. But they both know it's wise, and even if Jaina tenses her jaw, and clenches her hands around her staff, a small scattering of frost appearing at her fingertips, she still nods.

She doesn’t have to say the words, this time. But Vereesa feels them still.

She steps out from the shadow of the ship and into the shadows within. Outside, the sunlight had kept them warm enough, and the eternal sea breeze kept the heat from ever getting too intense. Inside, however, is suddenly cold, the water and the thick layers of wood enough for Vereesa to almost forget how warm it had been outside.

Her eyes accustom to the lack of light fast, but still she can’t see any hint of movement inside. Only bare wooden planks, washed over with sand and silt until the wood beneath can barely be seen.

“Jaina?” she calls out, cautiously. “I think it’s safe enough.”

She stands in the galley of the ship, bare of any signs of habitation. No barrels, no bunks and no hammocks, and certainly no sailors. Jaina steps in after her carrying fire in her hands, a torch she raises above her head, and Vereesa passes her eyes back over the room. There’s what likely once was the staircase to the upper deck, now fallen in and blocked off by a rain of timber.

“Maybe it was just a crab?” Vereesa suggests, but whatever attempt at humour that was falls flat, and Jaina only raises her hand higher, increases the size of the flames wreathing her, until they lap at her arms as well, and fill the ship with torchlight, flickering off the wet sand below their feet.

She hopes they are just mad. Madwomen, the two of them, chasing after a scurrying creature just because it fled from them.

Jaina walks towards the centre of the room, watching the corners of the room, the splashing of her progress so loud, and the tracks left behind her so deep, that Vereesa tenses, watches each shadow to see if they move, but it stays quiet and her eyes are drawn back to the light, and to the shadow of something beneath Jaina’s feet.

“Jaina stop.” Vereesa calls, but the shadow doesn’t move, only fades as the displaced sand collapses back in on where Jaina had been walking.

Vereesa moves cautiously closer to her, and when she comes within an arm’s reach of Jaina, she scuffs her boot at the floor, deep enough to kick the sand out from on top of the wood. Beneath, she finds deep gouges in the wood, deep but precise, and as she keeps kicking the sand and silt out from its place, the line stays firm, unbroken, joins other lines in a pattern she cannot yet recognise.

“Step back.” Jaina tells her, and Vereesa obeys, watches as Jaina thrusts her staff forwards, summoning a concentrated burst of ice that uncovers more of the carving, more and more until even Vereesa can recognise it for what it is. A rune, the remnants of some large spell. But it is complex, lines and shapes that loop back on each other, far too complex for Vereesa to understand. But she can see the frown on Jaina’s expression, the concern that grows as each new section is uncovered.

She follows it round in a circle, and then cuts inside, closer and closer, until she flicks aside a large mound of sand, and finds their lost crab waiting within. Whatever void magic has infected it is stronger now and gives it an aura of malevolence, and as soon as it has been disturbed it snaps at Jaina’s feet.

She hisses, and manages to dodge it, and before her foot meets the ground again Vereesa has managed to draw an arrow and fire it, pinning the crab to the deck. Even that isn’t enough to quieten it, and void energy crackles around the wood of her arrow as it strains against the wood, still ever-reaching for Jaina.

There’s another arrow on her bow, but before she can draw it Jaina has brought her staff upwards, wreathed it in ice, and slammed it down on the crab like a spear, not so much slicing into it as crushing it, and finally the crab ceases moving.

As it collapses a burst of void energy emanates from it, leaving Jaina untouched but sinking into the now bare wood, making the uncovered rune shine bright white for a single moment. But without any focused magic to sustain it, the light fades, and they are left alone.

Jaina shakes her staff, grimacing at the pieces of crab still lingering on it.

“I found our guide.” She says, and casts a spell to clean the staff.

“I noticed.” Vereesa tells her. And maybe she is foolhardy, maybe desperate, but she crosses over the carved rune, and takes Jaina into her arms for a moment. Just a moment, that’s all she needs, just long enough to ground herself and alleviate the awful twist in her gut she has felt since stepping into this ship, found the carving hidden beneath their feet.

It’s a comfort, for a second. But Jaina breaks it, all too soon.

“I know what this spell was.” She says, speaking against Vereesa’s shoulder. And Vereesa steps away, gives Jaina the space to gesture at the lines around them. “It’s too much like… I showed you it once, do you remember? My wards around Boralus? It’s a counter to them, their precise opposite, forcing in a backdoor, only just wide enough for a handful of creatures to slip through but it’s enough. It’s enough.”

“So, the naga from a few days ago…”

“They got in because of this. So too did the void creature from before that…” Jaina’s hands wrap tight around her staff again, and Vereesa can see the frost return around her fingers, stronger this time, coating the entire staff with ice before Jaina notices, and melts it away. “How did they know?” Jaina asks. “How could they possibly have _known_?”

“I don’t know.” Vereesa tells her. And it’s the truth. As honest as she dares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 23/09: admittedly this is a VERY bad place to end things but given my current opinion on this fic.... i probably won't continue it. feel free to take the weird crab subplot & imagine a more entertaining ending if youd like lol

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone asks I am bending the rules of like enchanting and magic and all that just bc i want to have fun & also i get very easily lost in the fantasy of it all like yeahhh enchanted bracers... lets go all out with this...
> 
> anyways i swear i meant to write something based on [this art](http://jawlipops.tumblr.com/post/181336109215/theyre-underrated) much much much earlier but alas i get very easily distracted


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